The latest coronavirus news from Canada and around the world Friday. This file will be updated throughout the day. Web links to longer stories if available.
9:30 p.m.: Toronto’s COVID-19 vaccine allocation is plunging by more 40 per cent next week after the end of the Ontario government’s boost in supply for virus hot spots, the Star has learned.
Toronto Public Health said Friday the allocation for next week is 179,020 vaccine doses, down from 337,170 doses in the last of two weeks in which the province aimed 50 per cent of its vaccine supply at COVID-19 hot spots.
The Premier Doug Ford government did not heed calls from its science advisory table, the Toronto Public Health board and Greater Toronto-Hamilton area local leaders to continue the extra supply to hard-hit health units, many in Toronto and Peel Region, for a total of four weeks.
Instead, allocation to all parts of Ontario returns to a per-capita basis, with the promise of an increasing vaccine supply for all in coming weeks.
“The Ontario science table called for four weeks to blast vaccines into the hot spots, to flood areas where COVID flames were the highest,” Coun. Joe Cressy, chair of the Toronto health board, said in a Friday interview.
“Instead, we saw a two-week allocation which was extremely effective — but it ended two weeks too soon. The number of Torontonians who will be vaccinated each and every day in hot spots, and across the city, will be significantly less than in the two weeks we just experienced,” Cressy said.
Toronto Fire Chief Matthew Pegg, overseeing Toronto’s vaccine rollout, said the nine city-run clinics boosted vaccinations to a total of 98,000 doses per week, but now will scale back to 60,000, due to diminished supply.
Read the full story here from David Rider.
9:30 p.m.: In Canada, the provinces are reporting 494,638 new vaccinations administered for a total of 17,734,225 doses given. Nationwide, 1,370,327 people or 3.6 per cent of the population has been fully vaccinated. The provinces have administered doses at a rate of 46,793.043 per 100,000.
There were no new vaccines delivered to the provinces and territories for a total of 20,355,204 doses delivered so far. The provinces and territories have used 87.12 per cent of their available vaccine supply.
Please note that Newfoundland and Labrador, P.E.I., Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and the territories typically do not report on a daily basis.
9:15 p.m.: The Calgary Stampede is vowing that the show will go on this summer.
The annual 10-day July festival is not only one of the richest rodeos in the world, but one of the biggest tourism attractions in the country.
It will not be the typical event familiar to crowds, but organizers are working to adapt marquee offerings such as the rodeo — which means things such as chuckwagon racing and bull riding — and a midway with rides and food for the age of social distancing, said spokesperson Kristina Barnes.
She added that organizers are working with Alberta Health Services to make sure they’re compliant with all public health measures.
“So expect fewer people, more space, but familiar Stampede experiences that just look different this year.”
The announcement comes at a time that rodeo is in the spotlight in Alberta — and not for pandemic-friendly reasons. Two weeks ago, a rodeo held in a pasture north of Calgary in protest of lockdown measures packed hundreds of maskless spectators into stands even as the province battled some of the highest COVID-19 numbers on the continent.
Read the full story here from Alex Boyd.
8:43 p.m.: Ontario’s reported COVID-19 infection rate is falling. That much is undeniable. But can we trust the numbers?
In the last 25 days, the province’s seven-day average for reported cases has fallen 40 per cent, from about 4,350 cases a day to roughly 2,600. Taken by itself, this drop in reported cases seems to suggest the third wave of COVID-19 is receding very quickly in this province, that things are looking up.
But in that time period, another key indicator of the virus’s spread has remained stubbornly high; on Sunday, 9.1 per cent of all COVID-19 tests processed in the province’s testing labs came back positive, not far off the province’s one-day record from two weeks earlier.
And the current seven-day average for test positivity, 7.1 per cent, is still elevated too, down only about 20 per cent from its highest at the peak of the third wave.
What’s more, the province is testing far fewer people than it was a month ago, down from averaging about 55,000 completed tests a day in early April to about 40,000, as of Thursday.
The sum of all this might create a confusing picture; how can we be sure the falling daily case average is truly good news, when the province is both doing far fewer tests, and still seeing an alarmingly high number of positives?
Read the full story here from Ed Tubb and Kenyon Wallace
7:44 p.m.: The military officer in charge of Canada’s vaccine rollout has left his assignment with the Public Health Agency of Canada.
The Department of National Defence says in a release that Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin is off the job pending the results of a military investigation.
The release says acting chief of the defence staff, Lt.-Gen. Wayne Eyre, will be reviewing next steps with Fortin.
The Department says it will have no further comment.
More to come.
7 p.m.: All British Columbia residents over 25 years old can now book their COVID-19 vaccine, while those 18 and older will be able to do so by the end of the weekend, as the province speeds up its vaccine rollout.
Health Minister Adrian Dix and provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry say in a joint statement that it’s clear vaccines are working, and more people registering will help protect the wider community.
B.C. reported 494 new cases of COVID-19 Friday, for a total of 138,304 since the pandemic first began.
There were also two new deaths, bringing the toll to 1,634.
Dix and Henry say more than 2.39 million doses of vaccine have been administered, of which 124,880 are second doses.
6:50 p.m.: Public health units must work closely with their local school boards to plan for the mass rollout of vaccines for kids ages 12 to 17 “with a special focus on harder to reach student populations,” says a provincial memo obtained by the Star.
In the note, sent to local medical officers of health and copied to directors of education, the province said that, with children now allowed to receive the Pfizer vaccine, starting May 31, “this approval provides an important opportunity to continue to keep schools healthy and safe.”
Local health units “in partnership with school boards, will be responsible for the development of local vaccination plans for this age group, including for their family members/caregivers who have not yet received a vaccine,” says the Thursday memo, from both Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, Dr. David Williams, and Dr. Homer Tien, who heads the vaccine distribution task force.
Read the full story here from Kristen Rushowy
5:55 p.m. Alberta is reporting 1,433 new cases of COVID-19, reports The Canadian Press.
That brings the total number of active infections in the province to 23,873, according to CP.
Officials also say there have been five more deaths in Alberta due to the virus.
There are 713 people in hospital because of COVID-19, including 177 people in intensive care.
5:52 p.m. Public health experts and the head of Quebec’s largest business group say the province’s reopening plan should be based around vaccination rates, reports The Canadian Press.
Karl Blackburn, president and CEO of the Conseil du patronal du Québec, the province’s largest employer’s group, said his members want a predictable plan that will allow them to prepare. Blackburn said in an interview Friday he prefers a plan that is based on specific targets, not specific dates, because the situation could change, according to CP.
“We all hope for a return to a certain normalcy,” he said about the summer. “And this return to a certain normalcy definitely comes through vaccination.”
Premier François Legault has hinted over the past couple of weeks his government is gearing up to present a plan to Quebecers and has said he was impressed by what Saskatchewan offered to residents in early May.
Saskatchewan’s so-called “Reopening Roadmap” is pegged to the population’s immunization levels: as the rate increases, more activities are permitted.
Dr. Cory Neudorf, a professor of community health and epidemiology at the University of Saskatchewan, said his province’s plan has more pros than cons.
“The main thing that, I think, is appealing to people is, first of all, some clear metrics that say once a bar is reached, we’re going to start seeing some easing of restrictions,” he said in an interview Friday. “People have been hearing a lot of convoluted messaging, restrictions lifted then having to be put back in place, and they seem to really not know if, or when, an end is in sight.”
Tying the reopening to vaccination rates is also a good idea, he said, because it will encourage people of all age groups to get vaccinated.
He said incentivizing people to get vaccinated is important because as more vulnerable people are protected, and the number of deaths and hospitalizations decline, others may become less motivated to get vaccinated.
“The fear is that you get a certain proportion of coverage, cases come down, and it keeps smouldering along, but people aren’t motivated enough to come out and get immunized and so you’re gonna end up with this long, long road to recovery, where we keep getting cases, breakthrough outbreaks and these sorts of things.”
But Neudorf said he’s worried the thresholds for reopening in Saskatchewan’s plan are too low to stop the spread of more transmissible variants of the novel coronavirus. He said he believes 85 per cent of the population needs to be fully vaccinated to stop the spread of COVID-19.
The reopening plan introduced in the United Kingdom, on which Saskatchewan’s was based, moved more slowly than the province’s, Neudorf said.
Quebec reported 838 new cases of COVID-19 Friday and eight more deaths attributed to the novel coronavirus, including two within the previous 24 hours. Health officials said hospitalizations rose by 10, to 530, and 123 people were in intensive care, an increase of two.
Officials said 110,119 doses of vaccine were administered Thursday — it is a new, single-day record — for a total of 4,127,768.
Quebec opened vaccination to all residents 18 and older on Thursday. The government said almost 56 per cent of adult Quebecers have received at least one dose of vaccine and another 16 per cent of adults have an appointment.
Quebec has reported a total of 361,820 COVID-19 cases and 11,025 deaths linked to the virus.
5:52 p.m. Saskatchewan has confirmed its first case of a rare blood-clotting disorder, after a woman received the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, reports The Canadian Press.
The woman in her 60s was given the vaccine on April 11, according to CP.
The Ministry of Health says she has since received treatment and is recovering.
The condition called vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia, or VITT, involves severe and aggressive blood clots.
There have been at least 18 other confirmed cases of VITT in Canada and three people have died.
Health officials said last Friday that they had been investigating three possible cases of VITT in Saskatchewan.
The province says it has administered about 72,000 doses of AstraZeneca and plans to offer second doses of the same vaccine to those who had it as their first shot.
4:22 p.m. Federal health authorities laid out their vision of what life could look like after most Canadians are vaccinated against COVID-19, just as regional officials warned some people may be getting ahead of themselves through ill-advised gatherings, reports The Canadian Press.
Canada’s chief public health officer raised hopes Friday that summer fun and fall holiday bashes may lie ahead as she rolled out a blueprint for how the vaccination campaign could lift the country out of COVID-19 lockdown, according to CP.
Dr. Theresa Tam said Canada may have “passed the peak” of the third wave, as average daily COVID-19 case counts dropped to fewer than 7,000 for the first time since April.
There’s also been a decline in severe illness, with an average of fewer than 4,000 COVID-19 patients being treated in hospital each day, she said.
Tam touted “great strides” in the fact nearly half of the adults in Canada have had at least one vaccine dose, suggesting that maintaining this pace could pay off in the form of “an outdoor summer that gets us back into many of the activities we’ve been missing.”
That could include small outdoor gatherings with family and friends in the warm weather, such as picnics in the park, outdoor sports and patio dining, said Tam.
For that to happen, at least 75 per cent of adults must receive at least one jab, including 20 per cent who have both doses, according to federal modelling. Tam said that first immunization target is “within sight.”
The next step will be to fully vaccinate at least 75 per cent of eligible adults to allow for more indoor activities this fall, including in-person learning at colleges, a return to the office and multi-household holiday celebrations, she said.
“To get to this better summer and fall, we need to keep doing everything we can to protect ourselves and our communities, ease the pressure on the health system and help bring an end to this pandemic,” said Tam.
Public Services and Procurement Minister Anita Anand said Canada can expect to receive 4.5 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna ahead of Victoria Day weekend.
Anand said Pfizer has moved up its schedule to deliver two million doses early next week, and 1.4 million more are expected to arrive on Thursday and Friday. Moderna is also set to send 1.1 million doses next week, she said.
As the vaccine rollout accelerates, Health Minister Patty Hajdu said the national timeline to ease restrictions is “realistic,” but these targets have to be tailored to local epidemiological conditions.
“This gives Canadians a vision of what it looks like as we proceed down this vaccination path together,” said Hajdu. “It helps provide that guideline for Canadians as they undergo their own community’s journey with vaccination.”
4:22 p.m. Manitoba reported 491 new infections Friday after setting a daily record Thursday of 560 cases, reports The Canadian Press.
Dr. Jazz Atwal, the deputy chief public health officer, predicted Friday that COVID-19 numbers would worsen for at least another week before dropping.
Atwal said a current spike in cases and hospitalization rates had been made worse by too many people gathering and interacting with others, despite public health orders that have been tightened three times in the last month.
Nunavut’s health minister scolded residents in Iqaluit on Friday, when Lorne Kusugak urged an end to gathering, so the city can have a shot at a normal summer, according to CP.
Nunavut’s chief public health officer, Dr. Michael Patterson, said a recent gathering between households resulted in several infections in children. Public health measures restrict all indoor and outdoor gatherings.
Twelve more cases of COVID-19 have been reported in Iqaluit, bringing the city’s active total to 78.
Ontario reported 2,362 new COVID-19 cases Friday, and 26 more deaths from the virus. There were 1,582 COVID-19 patients in hospital and of those, 777 people were in intensive care and 560 were on ventilators.
Quebec reported 838 new cases of COVID-19 and eight more deaths. Hospitalizations rose by 10, to 530, and 123 people were in intensive care, a rise of two.
Saskatchewan reported 227 new cases of COVID-19 and two more deaths. The province also confirmed one case of vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT), or blood clots, in a woman who had received the AstraZeneca vaccine in April.
3:50 p.m. Saskatchewan is reporting 227 new cases of COVID-19 today, reports The Canadian Press.
Two more people have died, one in their 40s and one in their 70s, according to CP.
The province is now dealing with 2,075 active cases.
There are 149 people in the hospital, 34 of whom are in intensive care.
The province has now confirmed one case of vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT), or blood clots, in a woman who had received the AstraZeneca vaccine in April.
The woman has received treatment and is recovering.
The province has now delivered over 550,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine.
3:01 p.m. Medical experts say Ontario will have to scale up its vaccination effort significantly to achieve its goal of inoculating all willing adults fully against COVID-19 by the end of the summer, reports The Canadian Press.
They say the province will need far more health care workers at vaccine clinics, 24-hour sites and clear public messaging to meets its Sept. 22 target, according to CP.
The president of the Ontario Medical Association the province should use all available vaccine facilities and engage more family doctors to reach its goal.
“If we were in a position of unlimited supply and we were able to use all of our resources to provide those vaccines, we’d stand a fighting chance,” Dr. Samantha Hill said.
2:49 p.m. Some health experts are questioning Canada’s decision to accept thousands of doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine from a global vaccine-sharing alliance, only to have them sit in freezers in an Ontario warehouse, reports The Canadian Press.
More than 655,000 doses of AstraZeneca, which most provinces have now decided against using first doses, arrived in Canada through the COVAX initiative Thursday, according to CP.
It is the first time vaccines have been delivered to Canada without immediately being distributed to provinces and territories, because Ottawa isn’t yet clear who wants them.
Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin, who is managing vaccine logistics for the federal government, said Thursday the Public Health Agency of Canada is waiting for provinces to put in their orders for those doses before sending them out.
But most provinces have now decided to stop giving AstraZeneca as a first dose and are still mulling whether to give it as second dose or offer to get their second dose using either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines.
Dr. Irfan Dhalla, an internal medicine specialist in Toronto, says it is unconscionable to sit on those doses and the choice must be made immediately to use them or send them to countries that will.
Health Minister Patty Hajdu defended accepting the doses even though they were going to be stored for now, saying there’s no indication yet provinces won’t use them for second doses.
“Obviously, we’re monitoring this very closely, and my expectation is that doses of vaccine, regardless of the variety and type, don’t go to waste,” she said.
2:48 p.m. Canadian residents should be able to head to the United States for COVID-19 vaccinations and be exempt from mandatory quarantine on return if health authorities here deem the shots medically necessary, a hospital CEO said on Friday, reports The Canadian Press.
Although a vaccination itself does not exempt incoming travellers from quarantine rules, an exemption does exist for those heading abroad for medically essential procedures, according to CP.
David Musyj, head of Windsor Regional Hospital in the border city of Windsor, Ont., said he has asked the Public Health Agency of Canada whether the government does deem the vaccines medically necessary.
“How can a COVID vaccine not be considered essential?” Musyj said in an interview Friday. “These vaccines are within reach. Any Canadian can go over there.”
Windsor’s mayor has discussed using city transit buses to take residents to a mass vaccine site at Detroit’s Ford Field stadium and bring them back. Musyj said his hospital could help with such an effort but the quarantine requirement for people returning to Canada is an obstacle.
Musyj has now sought clarity on the medical exemption.
According to the rules, a doctor in Canada has to decide a medical service abroad is essential for a patient, and the person must provide proof they received it to avoid quarantine on return.
Musyj said he wants an advance ruling from Health Canada, adding it would be beneficial to access clinics in the U.S. and return without having to isolate.
In an initial response for comment on the hospital’s request, Health Canada said only that a doctor’s recommendation “falls under the practice of medicine, which is of provincial/territorial jurisdiction.”
However, a spokeswoman did say the ministry was looking at allowing Canadians to pick up surplus doses in the U.S. for injection here.
Musyj said it would be simple to drive over to Detroit or other border states and have the vaccines back in Canada within hours.
“They’ve got vaccines to burn over there,” he said. “Let’s go get them!”
2:42 p.m. Health officials in New Brunswick are reporting five new cases of COVID-19 today, all among people under the age of 40, reports The Canadian Press.
Four of the cases are in the Fredericton area and one is in the Saint John region, according to CP.
There are now 116 active cases in the province, with six patients hospitalized in New Brunswick, including two in intensive care.
Another four New Brunswickers are hospitalized with COVID-19 out of province.
More than 300,000 people in the province have now received at least one dose of vaccine, representing more than 44 per cent of the province’s population over the age of 12.
Since the onset of the pandemic, there have been 2,045 cases of COVID-19 in New Brunswick and 41 related deaths.
1 p.m. Manitoba is opening up COVID-19 vaccinations to all people aged 12 and up, down from 18 and up.
Anyone under 18 will be able to get the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at provincial supersizes and urban Indigenous clinics.
Health Canada approved the Pfizer vaccine for people as young as 12 on May 5.
12:55 p.m. Prince Edward Island is reporting two new COVID-19 cases.
Chief medical officer of health Dr. Heather Morrison says both people are in their 20s.
One is a close contact of a case reported Thursday involving a Charlottetown daycare worker.
She says the close contact of the daycare worker had travelled outside the Atlantic region and did not properly isolate when they returned.
She says 35 children and staff at the daycare have all tested negative but must continue to isolate.
12:50 p.m. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney is distancing himself from a decision to expel two members from his United Conservative caucus.
But he says the decision affirms confidence of the caucus in his leadership, and his government can’t be distracted right now by those with “personal agendas.”
Kenney made the comments this morning in an interview on CHED radio, one day after his caucus voted to turf backbench members Todd Loewen and Drew Barnes.
Loewen had called for Kenney to quit, saying the premier’s actions are dragging the party down to defeat in the next election, while Barnes has been highly critical of Kenney’s COVID-19 response.
Kenney says it was caucus members who voted to expel the members and that he was careful not to influence the proceedings.
Both Loewen and Barnes have said they will sit as Independents, and that the party under Kenney is no longer a grassroots-driven movement but a top-down one-man show.
12:40 p.m. Quebec is reporting 838 new cases of COVID-19 Friday and eight more deaths attributed to the novel coronavirus, including two within the past 24 hours.
Health officials say hospitalizations rose by 10, to 530, and 123 people were in intensive care, a rise of two.
Officials say 110,119 doses of vaccine were administered Thursday — a new, single-day record — for a total of 4,127,768.
Quebec opened vaccination to all residents 18 and older on Thursday. The government says almost 56 per cent of adult Quebecers have received at least one dose of vaccine and another 16 per cent of adults have an appointment.
Bas-St-Laurent, northeast of Quebec City, is the most affected region on a per-capita basis, with 218 active cases per 100,000 people, compared with 89.1 active cases per 100,000 people for the province.
Quebec has reported a total of 361,820 COVID-19 cases and 11,025 deaths linked to the virus.
12:30 p.m. Workplace clinics in one of the province’s hardest-hit regions have so far delivered the fewest doses of COVID vaccines, behind hospitals, mass sites, pop-ups and even family doctors, according to data from Peel Public Health.
Ontario’s hot spot strategy, to target vaccines to 114 higher-risk postal codes, included a workplace component as essential workers have been one of the most vulnerable groups throughout the pandemic. Employers had to fund the clinics themselves, as well as commit to vaccinating people in the surrounding neighbourhood.
But in Peel, occupational clinics, with a new, narrowed scope away from community vaccinations, have delivered just 4,727 doses, far below the leading site, hospitals, at over 300,000.
Read the full story from the Star’s May Warren and Olivia Bowden
12:22 p.m. The Humber River Hospital clinic at Downsview Arena is open to adults 18+ in all M postal codes on Friday.
11:42 a.m. The number of planes landing in Canada carrying passengers with COVID-19 was cut by more than half in the two weeks after the federal government barred incoming flights from India and Pakistan.
Transport Canada announced April 22 that direct flights from the countries would be halted for 30 days after high numbers of passengers were testing positive for the virus after landing.
The last flights to arrive from India landed in Toronto the next day.
Health Canada data posted online show between April 10 and 23, 135 international flights arrived with at least one passenger who had COVID-19.
Thirty-six of those were direct flights from India and two were from Pakistan.
Between April 24 and May 7, the total number fell to 56 flights, including a dozen from the United States and eight from Europe.
A spokeswoman for Health Canada says the ban on direct flights from India and Pakistan has also affected passengers trying to return to Canada from those countries on connecting flights through airports in Europe or the United States.
11:27 a.m. Nova Scotia has opened up COVID-19 vaccine appointments for people aged 35 and older.
The 35 to 39 age group is now eligible to get the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines at clinics across the province.
The province says there are about 63,500 eligible people in the age group.
Nova Scotia announced a milestone in its COVID-19 vaccination program on Thursday after administering a 400,000th dose of vaccine.
Health officials said in passing that mark, the province had doubled the number of shots administered in less than a month.
They reported 110 new cases of novel coronavirus on Thursday and 1,572 active cases.
11:15 a.m. Quebec is reporting 838 new COVID-19 cases and eight more deaths from the virus.
Two of the deaths occurred in the past 24 hours.
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Health officials say hospitalizations rose by 10 to 530 and 123 people were in intensive care, an increase of two.
11:15 a.m. Prince Edward Island is reporting two new COVID-19 cases.
Chief medical officer of health Dr. Heather Morrison says both people are in their 20s.
One is a close contact of a case reported Thursday involving a Charlottetown daycare worker.
She says the close contact of the daycare worker had travelled outside the Atlantic region and did not properly isolate when they returned.
She says 35 children and staff at the daycare have all tested negative but must continue to isolate.
11:10 a.m. As new variants of COVID-19 are identified globally, conversations about closing Canada’s borders have reignited.
But advocates warn that inequitable border measures and the tendency to lean on country names to identify variants of concern is leading to increased pressure and stigmatization for some of Canada’s racialized communities.
At the same time, migrant workers and international students are facing family separation or barriers to returning to the country. So, what comes next?
Read the full story from the Star’s Jenna Moon
10:20 a.m. 1,610,514 vaccine doses have been administered in Toronto as of May 14.
10:15 a.m. (updated) Ontario is reporting another 2,362 COVID-19 cases and 26 more deaths, according to its latest report released Friday morning.
The seven-day average is at 2,616 cases daily, or 131 weekly per 100,000. Ontario’s seven-day average for deaths is at 27.9 daily.
The province says 44,040 tests were completed the previous day, and a 6.1 per cent positivity rate.
There are 1,582 people currently hospitalized with COVID-19 in the province, including 777 patients in intensive care. There are 560 people on ventilators.
Read the full story from the Star’s Zena Salem
9:30 a.m. Greyhound Canada is permanently shuttering its operations across the country after years of declining ridership and cuts to service.
The flagship motorcoach company, founded nearly a century ago to connect rural communities with urban centres across North America, announced on Thursday it will close its remaining Canadian routes, in Ontario and Quebec.
“Our service is reliant on the fare box — we are not able to sustain operations with a significant reduction in ridership and the corresponding revenue loss,” the company said in a news release.
The decision will result in more than 400 lost jobs, according to the bus drivers’ union, and it deals a blow to rural and remote areas that rely on a patchwork of private bus companies for mobility.
Read the full story from the Star’s Breanna Xavier-Carter and Jacob Lorinc
9:15 a.m. Carlo Escario reported to the border agency’s office at Pearson airport at 7:30 a.m. on Thursday for the flight that was to remove him from Canada.
He asked the border officials to let him wait outside the office so he could be with his two cousins until his boarding at 9:30 a.m., while his deportation papers to the Philippines were finalized.
All the while, the front-line essential health-care worker was checking his email and social media, praying for a last-minute reprieve.
Over the past 24 hours, his supporters had organized an online petition that garnered more than 8,200 signatures and lobbied federal politicians to defer his removal until June, so he could get his second dose of Pfizer vaccine before he’s sent back to his homeland.
His former colleagues at Toronto General Hospital had also scrambled to try unsuccessfully to find him a spare dose that he could have before his departure to the Philippines, which is now fighting a second wave of COVID-19 and struggling to secure vaccines for its people.
Then at 8:39 a.m., his cellphone rang.
Read the full story from the Star’s Nicholas Keung
8:45 a.m. An online petition with more than 350,000 signatures calling for the Tokyo Games to be cancelled was submitted Friday to local organizers, the International Olympic Committee and others.
The Olympics are scheduled to open in just 10 weeks on July 23 in the midst of a pandemic with Tokyo and other areas under a state of emergency. Cases continue to rise in Japan, where less than 2 per cent of the population has been fully vaccinated.
The petition campaign — called “Stop Tokyo Olympics” — was drafted by well-known lawyer Kenji Utsunomiya, who has also run for governor of Tokyo. He said the response was surprising but acknowledged that this was too little, and probably too late.
“I think that the media coverage puts a lot of pressure on the IOC, the International Paralympic Committee, the Japanese government, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and the organizing committee,” Utsunomiya said at a news conference. “So in that sense, I am glad I did it. However, in terms of the numbers, I think that tens of millions of signatures are really necessary.”
Utsunomiya said the Olympics would divert medical services from the general public, which has been a rising concern as hospitals come under strains that could get worse as the games approach.
Organizers and the IOC say they will hold the games safely, isolating 15,400 Olympic and Paralympic athletes in a “bubble” and repeatedly testing them and the tens of thousands of others — judges, staff, sponsors, media and broadcasters — who will enter a country that has had its borders sealed for a year.
Japan has attributed about 11,000 deaths to COVID-19, good by world standards but poor in Asia where places like Taiwan and South Korea have been more successful.
There in no indication the Olympics will be cancelled with billions of dollars riding on it, although there has been opposition from the local medical community. Last month, the British Medical Journal suggested the games be “reconsidered.”
The IOC relies on selling broadcast rights for almost 75 per cent of its income — 18 per cent more is from sponsors — and Japan has officially spent $15.4 billion to organize the Olympics. A government audit has suggested the number might be twice that large.
8 a.m. Students will have to stick with online learning “for the time being,” Premier Doug Ford said Thursday after extending the province’s stay-at-home order into next month.
And while some pediatric experts are urging a possible return to in-person classes in June in areas with low COVID-19 rates, Ford accused teacher unions of “potentially putting an injunction against opening the schools.”
“The school situation remains a critical concern for many parents,” Ford said. “On the one hand, we have some doctors saying they want to open the schools. On the other hand, we have the teachers’ unions saying we can’t do that right now. We need public health doctors, teachers and labour partners to agree on the best path forward when we also need consensus. And we simply don’t have that right now.”
So, he added, “for the time being, we will need to continue with virtual learning. We will take this time to vaccinate as many teachers and students as possible” now that kids aged 12 to 17 will be eligible for a shot starting May 31.
Read the full story from the Star’s Kristin Rushowy
7:50 a.m. A father figure to many and community leader with the Toronto Kiki Ballroom Alliance, 37-year-old Keon ‘Danger’ Providence suddenly passed away on Monday, due to a stroke.
Danger founded the House of Constantine in Toronto’s ballroom community, as a place BIPOC LGBTQ+ people could call home.
Originally from St. Vincent and the Grenadines in the Caribbean, Danger immigrated to Canada with his family in 2006.
“Anyone who met Keon would never be the same, I can tell you that,” Danger’s mother Patrice Providence told the Star.
“Keon was there for his community as a mentor, and they all just loved him,” she added.
Read the full story from the Star’s Akrit Michael and Breanna Xavier-Carter
7:40 a.m. In the hours between the sun rising on the eastern seaboard and setting on the western coast today, Canada will have administered more COVID-19 vaccine shots relative to its population than the United States.
It is a milestone first hit late last week, as the vaccination program in this country speeds up and the one south of the border slows.
Last Tuesday, both countries gave vaccine doses, either first or second, to about two thirds of a per cent of their populations in a single day — a brief moment of synchronicity before the neighbours seemed to set off in different directions.
There’s no question that the U.S. vaccine rollout has been quicker out of the gate. At its peak last month, the U.S. was managing to give a vaccine dose to a full percentage point of its population every day. But the pace of its rollout has fallen steadily. Meanwhile, Canadian numbers have trended upwards, bolstered by some of the biggest shipments of vaccine since doses were authorized late last year.
Read the full story from the Star’s Alex Boyd
7:20 a.m. On a Saturday morning in late December, Sandy Bassett sat in her office at the Wexford Residence long-term-care home, staring at a long list of names.
Over two days, Bassett would call every person on the list, her entire staff of more than 180 people, and ask the same question: Are you willing to be vaccinated?
The Wexford is a not-for-profit nursing home on a busy commercial strip in a COVID-19 hot spot in Scarborough. Bassett, the CEO and executive director, had learned a week earlier that the home would be among the first in Ontario to be offered vaccinations. A team from nearby Michael Garron Hospital would send buses to shuttle staff to their clinic for the first dose.
Vaccines were the way out of the nightmare long-term-care homes had been facing since the pandemic’s first wave — an end to mass outbreaks that, in some homes, had wiped out dozens of residents. But long-term-care operators across the province would face a challenge that threatened the goal of protecting vulnerable seniors: staff were not initially signing up in large numbers. It was up to people like Bassett and her team to address the hesitancy. But how?
Read the full story from the Star’s Amy Dempsey
7:10 a.m. If Greg Louth, the owner of Lake St. George Golf Club, had kept the television on any longer Thursday afternoon, he would have thrown an axe through it.
Louth, whose family has owned the course north of Orillia, Ont., since 1979, was watching Premier Doug Ford extend the province’s stay-at-home order until June 2 with a mix of anger and frustration. Once Ford began talking about his buddies,” that’s when Louth turned it off.
“What an absolutely ignorant, stupid statement,” Louth said. “I’m still sitting here stunned.”
Ford addressed golf specifically Thursday as he reiterated the government’s position on trying to limit mobility. And he alluded to friends who were being cavalier with golf’s existing COVID-19 protocols as a reason why he is keeping courses closed, despite 26 million rounds being played in Ontario in 2020 with no known cases of COVID-19 traced back to a golf facility.
7 a.m. The U.K. official leading preparations for the COP26 climate conference reiterated Thursday the intention to hold the delayed summit in person despite the continuing problems caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Alok Sharma, the U.K.’s president-designate of COP26, said “every possible” measure was being explored, including around COVID-19 testing and vaccinations, to ensure the talks could be held safely.
In less than six months’ time delegates from across the world are due to arrive in Glasgow for the United Nations’ annual conference.
The summit was originally set for November 2020, but the pandemic forced it to be postponed for a year. A year on, there are still issues, and limits on international travel remain in place.
“For me it is vital that developing countries are able to sit at the same table, face-to-face with the larger countries, the big emitters,” Sharma said. “The desire for (an in-person summit) is what I’ve been hearing loud and clear from governments and communities around the world.”
Sharma said the world had not done “nearly enough” to act on the commitments of the Paris climate accord, which was first agreed at COP21 in 2016.
The treaty seeks to limit global temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with pre-industrial times.
The president-designate said COP26 was the “last hope” to keep that commitment.
6:39 a.m.: The Canadian National Exhibition, Taste of the Danforth and other crowd-drawing Toronto events are being cancelled for a second straight summer due to COVID-19 risk, the Star has learned.
The city is announcing Friday that no permits will be issued for events on public property until after Labour Day, Sept. 6. The timing preserves the possibility of in-person events at the Sept. 9-18 Toronto International Film Festival.
But no big gatherings can happen at the Honda Indy Toronto and Beaches Jazz Festival in July or, in August, the CNE and Taste of the Danforth. Pride had already cancelled its June events and parade.
Read the full story from the Star’s David Rider here.
6:35 a.m.: Vaccines were the way out of the nightmare long-term-care homes had been facing since the pandemic’s first wave — an end to mass outbreaks that, in some homes, had wiped out dozens of residents.
But long-term-care operators across the province would face a challenge that threatened the goal of protecting vulnerable seniors: staff were not initially signing up in large numbers. It was usually up to management to address the hesitancy. But how?
Read the full story from the Star’s Amy Dempsey here.
6:34 a.m.: When London’s Science Museum reopens next week, it will have some new artifacts: empty vaccine vials, testing kits and other items collected during the pandemic, to be featured in a new COVID-19 display.
Britain isn’t quite ready to consign the coronavirus to a museum — the outbreak is far from over here. But there is a definite feeling that the U.K. has turned a corner, and the mood in the country is jubilant. “The end is in sight,” one newspaper front page claimed recently. “Free at last!” read another.
Thanks to an efficient vaccine rollout program, Britain is finally saying goodbye to months of tough lockdown restrictions.
Starting Monday, all restaurants and bars in England can reopen with some precautions in place, as can hotels, theatres and museums. And Britons will be able to hug friends and family again, with the easing of social distancing rules that have been in place since the pandemic began.
It’s the biggest step yet to reopen the country following an easing of the crisis blamed for nearly 128,000 deaths, the highest reported COVID-19 toll in Europe.
Deaths in Britain have come down to single digits in recent days. It’s a far cry from January, when up to 1,477 deaths a day were recorded amid a brutal second wave driven by a more infectious variant first found in Kent, in southeastern England.
New cases have plummeted to an average of around 2,000 a day, compared with nearly 70,000 a day during the winter.
6:32 a.m.: India’s prime minister has warned people to take extra precautions as the country’s devastating coronavirus outbreak is spreading fast to rural areas where nearly two-thirds of the country’s nearly 1.4 billion people live.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged people living in rural areas, village councils and state governments to come together to meet the challenge. Modi said the army, navy and the Air Force have joined the fight against the pandemic in the country.
“We have lost a lot of near ones. I am feeling the pain people are suffering,” Modi said in Friday a speech at a farmers’ convention.
Meanwhile, India’s Health Ministry on Friday reported 343,144 new cases in the past 24 hours, a slight decline from the day before. Another 4,000 people died in the past 24 hours, raising total fatalities to 262,317 since the pandemic began. All of the figures are almost certainly a vast undercount, experts say.
6:32 a.m.: Authorities in Pakistan have reported 48 single-day deaths and about 2,500 new cases, one of the lowest levels of fatalities and infections from COVID-19 in the past two months.
It indicated Pakistan might have witnessed a peak, but experts say it was too early to tell.
Pakistan is currently in the middle of the another surge of coronavirus infections which authorities say is more dangerous as compared to the previous ones.
The National Command and Control Center, which oversees Pakistan’s response to COVID-19, has however urged people to continue adhering to social distancing rules.
The latest development comes days about 10 days after Pakistan imposed a two-week long nationwide lockdown ahead of Eil al-Fitr that was celebrated Thursday amid the pandemic. Pakistan has reported 19,384 deaths and 873,220 coronavirus cases since last year.
6:30 a.m.: The World Bank said it has signed an agreement with Sri Lanka to provide $80.5 million to help the island nation’s vaccination drive against COVID-19.
The funding comes as Sri Lanka is facing a severe shortage of vaccines because of the current crisis in neighbouring India, which had earlier promised to give the vaccines to Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka began it’s vaccination drive on Jan. 29 and in the first round, 925,242 people were vaccinated using Oxford-AstraZeneca shots.
At present, Sri Lanka’s Health Ministry has about 350,000 doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca and as a result, there is a shortage of 600,000 doses in order to complete administering second doses.
Sri Lanka is currently using 600,000 doses of Sinopharm vaccine and 15,000 of Sputnik V to give a first dose to others.
6:25 a.m.: Experts say Ontario will need to leverage clarity and collaboration to reach its goal of fully immunizing all willing adults against COVID-19 by mid-September.
Premier Doug Ford announced his goal of a “two-dose summer” yesterday, if supply allows.
A spokeswoman says the province aims to have all willing adults fully immunized against the virus by Sept. 22.
University of Toronto epidemiologist Ashleigh Tuite says the sooner the population can be fully vaccinated, the better.
She says the government should clarify its plan for second doses, given the confusing, “piecemeal” vaccination campaign thus far.
The president of the Ontario Medical Association says she is fully on board with the plan to get Ontarians fully vaccinated by September.
Read the full story from The Canadian Press here.
4 a.m.: The latest numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Canada as of 4 a.m. ET on Friday, May 14, 2021.
There are 1,312,408 confirmed cases in Canada (75,475 active, 1,212,108 resolved, 24,825 deaths). The total case count includes 13 confirmed cases among repatriated travellers.
There were 6,615 new cases Thursday. The rate of active cases is 198.59 per 100,000 people. Over the past seven days, there have been a total of 47,068 new cases. The seven-day rolling average of new cases is 6,724.
There were 60 new reported deaths Thursday. Over the past seven days there have been a total of 338 new reported deaths. The seven-day rolling average of new reported deaths is 48. The seven-day rolling average of the death rate is 0.13 per 100,000 people. The overall death rate is 65.32 per 100,000 people.
There have been 33,130,218 tests completed.
4 a.m.: The latest numbers on COVID-19 vaccinations in Canada as of 4 a.m. ET on Friday, May 14, 2021.
In Canada, the provinces are reporting 334,975 new vaccinations administered for a total of 17,239,587 doses given. Nationwide, 1,331,739 people or 3.5 per cent of the population has been fully vaccinated. The provinces have administered doses at a rate of 45,487.905 per 100,000.
There were 325,980 new vaccines delivered to the provinces and territories for a total of 20,276,264 doses delivered so far. The provinces and territories have used 85.02 per cent of their available vaccine supply.