Today’s coronavirus news: Ramp up Canadian vaccine manufacturing, says health adviser; WHO visits 2nd Wuhan hospital in investigation; Novavax vaccine news welcomed in South Africa
The latest coronavirus news from Canada and around the world Saturday. This file will be updated throughout the day. Web links to longer stories if available.
12:03 p.m. Ontario has administered 9,373 doses of the vaccine since its last daily update, with 336,828 vaccines given in total as of 8 p.m. the previous night.
11:06 a.m. Ontario is reporting another 2,063 of COVID-19 cases, and 73 more deaths, according to its latest report released Saturday morning.
The seven-day average is at 1,968 cases daily, or 95 weekly per 100,000. Ontario's seven-day average for deaths is at 56.0 daily.
There are 1,273 people currently hospitalized with COVID-19 in the province, including 353 patients in intensive care. There are 216 people on ventilators.
Ontario has administered 336,828 vaccines given in total as of 8 p.m. the previous night.
Locally, Health Minister Christine Elliott says 713 cases are in Toronto, 379 in Peel, 178 in York Region.
Meanwhile, 25 more residents in long-term care have died for a total of 3,516 since the pandemic began, in the latest report released by the province,
Ontario is reporting two less LTC homes in outbreak, for a total of 227.
There are 180 more cases in Ontario's LTC homes for a total of 20,384 since the beginning of the pandemic.
Since the pandemic began, 11 staff members in Ontario's long-term care homes have died due to the virus, according to the province.
This data is self-reported by the long-term care homes to the Ministry of Long-Term Care. Daily case and death figures may not immediately match the numbers posted by the local public health units due to lags in reporting time.
8:21 a.m. Germany says drugmakers will deliver at least 5 million doses of coronavirus vaccines to the country in the next three weeks.
The Health Ministry says on Twitter that Germany has already received 3.5 million doses in the past five weeks and administered 2.2 million shots.
Health Minister Jens Spahn says the new figures for deliveries from Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca were good news after a difficult start." Germany has given the first shot to about 2.2% of its 83 million population. Nearly half a million people had received both shots by Saturday. It's recommended the second shot be given 21 to 28 days after the first.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has summoned the governors of Germany's 16 states, which are responsible for organizing the vaccine drive, to discuss the slow rollout on Monday.
7 a.m. Members of a World Health Organization team investigating the origins of the coronavirus pandemic visited another Wuhan hospital that had treated early COVID-19 patients on their second full day of work Saturday.
Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital was one of the first in the Chinese city to deal with patients in early 2020 suffering from a then-unknown virus and is a key part of the epidemiological history of the disease.
Just back from visit at Jinyintan hospital, that specialised in infectious diseases and was designated for treatment of the first cases in Wuhan," Dutch virologist Marion Koopmans said in a post on Twitter. Stories quite similar to what I have heard from our ICU doctors."
Zoologist Peter Daszak of the U.S. group EcoHealth Alliance, who is a member of the team, said in a tweet that the visit was an important opportunity to talk directly" with medics who were fighting the virus at the critical time.
The team's first face-to-face meetings with Chinese scientists took place on Friday, before the experts who specialize in animal health, virology, food safety and epidemiology visited another early site of the outbreak, the Hubei Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine Hospital.
The Geneva-based WHO said late Thursday on Twitter that its team plans to visit hospitals, markets like the Huanan Seafood Market that was linked to many of the first cases, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and laboratories at facilities including the Wuhan Center for Disease Control.
6:53 a.m. News that the Novavax COVID-19 vaccine has shown about 60% efficacy on HIV-positive patients and that it seems to work against the variant of the virus now dominant in South Africa is being welcomed with relief in the country, but further studies are urged.
Results from a small Novavax Inc. study in South Africa suggest the vaccine does work but not nearly as well as it does against the variant from Britain. Early findings from a British study suggest the vaccine is nearly 96% effective against the older coronavirus and nearly 86% effective against the new variant there.
In South Africa, the new variant now causes more than 90% of new cases and is more infectious than the original virus.
On volunteers who are HIV-positive, preliminary studies in South Africa show the Novavax vaccine appears to be 60% effective. That has been welcomed in a country where nearly 7.7 million people live with the disease.
6 a.m. A leading Canadian health expert on the federal government's COVID-19 Task Force says the pandemic should be viewed as a wake-up call for Canada to create its own domestic vaccine manufacturing capacity.
Dr. Alan Bernstein says that with new variants of the novel coronavirus emerging, Canadians might need multiple vaccines for several years.
"The government's made hints of doing it. But I think the sooner we get on with it, the better," Bernstein, who is also the head of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), said in an interview Friday.
"We need domestic vaccine production capacity in the country for the next pandemic, and also for this pandemic. If there are variants arising, we may be designing second, third-generation vaccines and vaccinating the population for the next two or three years."
On Friday, Moderna announced that production delays would cut into its upcoming deliveries of vaccine doses to Canada. That followed Pfizer and BioNTech having cancelled an entire shipment of its COVID-19 vaccine to Canada this week, after reducing its previous shipment by 20 per cent, due to a temporary slowdown while its production facility in Belgium is being upgraded.
Saturday 4 a.m. Staff at a retirement home east of Montreal are living with their elderly residents to prevent them from being confined to their rooms during Quebec's COVID-19 lockdown.
It's the second time since the beginning of the pandemic that employees at Manoir Stanstead have locked down with residents.
Since Jan. 9, Quebecers have been under tight restrictions that include a nightly provincewide curfew and the closure of all non-essential businesses. Dining rooms at all long-term care homes and private seniors residences are also closed.
For Donna Rolfe, closing the dining area and keeping residents locked in their rooms at her facility is unacceptable. Instead, to ensure residents aren't isolated, she and her colleagues decided to shut themselves in the private care home located about 160 kilometres east of Montreal.
"They would have had to stay in their room, and we just don't think that's human to just stay in four walls," Rolfe, assistant director at the residence, said in a recent interview.
Friday 4:20 p.m. Manitoba's top doctor urged people not to look for loopholes Friday as new COVID-19 travel restrictions took effect.
A 14-day self-isolation requirement that previously applied to domestic travellers entering Manitoba from areas east of Terrace Bay in northern Ontario was broadened to include all out-of-province arrivals.
Follow the spirit of the (public health) orders. Don't look for ways to skirt the orders," Dr. Brent Roussin, chief public health officer, said.
We need to stay diligent."
There are exceptions to the rule for essential workers, people seeking medical care and people who live in border communities and need to venture into Ontario or Saskatchewan for groceries and other goods.