Today’s coronavirus news: Ontario reporting 1,699 more cases with three deaths; Vaccine rollout set to shift into high gear with major surge in expected deliveries
The latest coronavirus news from Canada and around the world Monday. This file will be updated throughout the day. Web links to longer stories if available.
12:25 p.m. German authorities were expected to extend lockdown measures again on Monday and possibly tighten some restrictions as they face a steady rise in new coronavirus infections, but leave schools open for now.
Chancellor Angela Merkel and the country's 16 state governors, who in highly decentralized Germany are responsible for imposing and lifting restrictions, held a videoconference nearly three weeks after last agreeing a several-step plan paving the way to relax some rules.
Since then, infections have increased steadily as the more contagious variant first detected in Britain has become dominant. Most lockdown restrictions are currently set to run through March 28. The chancellery is proposing an extension until April 18.
Rather than new moves toward a more normal life, one focus now is pressing regional officials to use consistently an emergency brake" mechanism under which relaxations granted in recent weeks - such as the partial reopening of nonessential shops - are supposed to be reimposed if new weekly infections in an area exceed 100 per 100,000 residents on three consecutive days.
Unfortunately, we will have to make use of this emergency brake," Merkel said Friday.
12:15 p.m.: The number of Floridians eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine expanded on Monday as the state allowed anybody age 50 and up to get the shot, and the county that is home to the state's biggest theme parks set the bar even lower by allowing anyone age 40 and up to get an injection.
With the loosening of the statewide qualifications, more than a third of Floridians were now eligible to get a vaccine solely based on age at all vaccination sites in the state.
Starting Monday, Orange County expanded the age eligibility a decade lower than the statewide requirement at its county-run facility at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando. Reservations were required for the drive-through site at the convention centre, and people attempting to book a spot online found themselves taking more than a hour to secure an appointment.
11:10 a.m.: Quebec is reporting 712 new COVID-19 cases and 15 deaths linked to the novel coronavirus, including three in the previous 24 hours.
Health authorities are also reporting increases in COVID-19 hospitalizations and intensive care cases today, with a dozen more patients in each category for a total of 513 in hospital and 114 requiring intensive care.
Authorities say an additional 21,180 vaccine doses have been administered for a total 966,566, representing about 11.4 per cent of the population.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, Quebec has had 303,051 confirmed cases, 10,614 deaths and 285,682 recoveries.
11 a.m.: Quebec has lowered the vaccine eligibility age in Montreal to those 60 and up as pharmacies in the city begin inoculations today.
Health authorities announced the change for the Montreal region late Sunday while keeping the age limit at 65 and older for the rest of the province.
Meanwhile, about 350 pharmacies will join the province's mass vaccination campaign beginning today.
Pharmacies in Montreal started booking appointments last Monday, with plans to enlarge the program to the rest of the province in the coming weeks.
Benoit Morin, head of the association representing pharmacy owners, says each participating pharmacy has received a first delivery of 100 doses but adds he's confident new deliveries will allow for more appointments.
In Montreal's neighbouring regions, the government has targeted March 29 as the first date to make appointments at participating pharmacies, with vaccinations to begin during the week of April 5.
About 11 per cent of Quebec's population has received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, with a total of 944,793 shots administered so far.
10:20 a.m.: Ontario is also reporting no new deaths in long-term care so the total number of resident deaths in LTC remains unchanged at 3,753.
10:20 a.m.: Ontario is reporting that 31,335 vaccine doses were administered since its last daily update, for a total of 1,553,040 as of 8 p.m. Sunday.
The province says 299,297 are fully vaccinated, which means they've had both shots.
10:17 a.m.: Locally, there are 500 new cases in Toronto, 318 in Peel 155 in York Region and 114 in Hamilton.
10:10 a.m.: Ontario is reporting 1,699 more COVID-19 cases with three deaths.
It's the lowest death total since Oct. 20.
The seven-day average is up to 1,600 cases daily (77 weekly per 100,000) and down to 11.7 deaths per day.
The labs report 31,089 completed tests. But there's a 5.4 per cent positivity rate, the highest since Jan. 26.
9:16 a.m.: Greece's health minister is requisitioning the services of private sector doctors from certain specialties in the wider Athens region to help fight a renewed surge in coronavirus infections that is straining hospitals to their limits.
In an announcement released Monday, Vassilis Kikilias said that despite repeated appeals for private doctors to volunteer to help in the public sector, very few came forward. Therefore, the minister said, he was ordering specialists in pathology, pneumonology and general medicine to help.
Kikilias had said Friday he would requisition private sector doctors unless at least 200 volunteered within 48 hours. Government spokeswoman Aristotelia Peloni said Monday that only 61 doctors had stepped forward voluntarily.
8:40 a.m.: Mayor John Tory is reporting that almost 375,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered to date in Toronto.
The city says 374,631 doses have been administered.
8:33 a.m. Republic of Congo's top presidential opposition candidate Guy Brice Parfait Kolelas, who was hospitalized with COVID-19 complications on election day, has died, a spokesman said Monday.
The 61-year-old politician had been flown to France for further treatment on Sunday but died shortly after landing in Paris, aides said.
He was last seen in a video circulating Saturday on social media in which he told supporters he was fighting death."
Spokesman Justin Nzoloufoua confirmed his death Monday to The Associated Press, and said efforts were underway to repatriate Kolelas' body to Brazzaville.
Kolelas, who won 15 per cent of the vote in the 2016 election, was expected to finish second to President Denis Sassou N'Guesso, one of Africa's longest-serving leaders with more than 36 years in office.
Sassou N'Guesso said Monday that Sunday's vote had taken place without incident.
I can therefore say that democracy is working in our country," said the president, who won with 60 per cent of ballots cast last time.
8:20 a.m. Mayor John Tory led a virtual ceremony in remembrance of Toronto's residents who have lost their lives to COVID-19 in the past year at Nathan Phillips Square Sunday evening.
The ceremony, which was broadcast live on local channels, began with the ringing of the Mourning Bell from Old City Hall and featured 2,753 candles being lit in the square, one for each life lost in the city due to the pandemic.
Tonight is especially about all of those innocent souls that the virus took from us in this past year. More than 2,750 Torontonians lost unexpectedly in one year," Tory said at the event.
Read the full story from the Star's Akrit Michael
8:10 a.m. More than 600 Amazon workers at one warehouse alone have contracted COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic. But the online retail giant has registered fewer than five cases at the provincial workers' compensation board, the Star has learned.
Last week, Peel Public Health ordered the company to close all shifts after concerns that cases within its Brampton Heritage Road facility were increasing significantly," even as community cases dropped.
But despite hundreds of workers testing positive, the company has registered almost no claims at the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board as of this past week.
Read the full story from the Star's Sara Mojtehedzadeh
7:50 a.m. It's only a snapshot of an extraordinary time, but a recently released study of condo values reports that three suburban Toronto neighbourhoods showed some of the best condo price appreciation per square foot in the city during the pandemic.
As downtown condo sales and prices dwindled after the first COVID-19 lockdown last spring, suburban condo markets continued to see gains.
Strata.ca, an online division of Slate Realty, said that condos in the core depreciated about six per cent last year. But it found that units in the often-overlooked areas of Malvern and Jane Street and Finch Avenue West appreciated 14 per cent and 11 per cent, respectively, between February 2020 and the same month this year.
Although Rexdale condo values declined in mid-October, they rebounded 5.1 per cent at the start of this year, according to the study.
Read the full story from the Star's Tess Kalinowski
7:35 a.m. A French-language Catholic elementary school will close until early April due to four COVID-19 cases among its students.
Classes at EEC Rene-Lamoureux, on Meadows Blvd. in Mississauga, will not resume in person on Monday, after four COVID-19 cases were reported among students in the past two weeks.
The school is scheduled to reopen for in-person learning on April 6.
An outbreak is called if the facility has two or more COVID-19 cases with an epidemiological link, which means at least one of the cases could have acquired the infection in the school or child care centre.
The additional school closure comes after the Dufferin-Peel Catholic board announced late last week that it had closed 10 schools because of the pandemic. The schools include St. Sofia in Mississauga, where an outbreak hit at least 15 students and staff, sending three to hospital.
Read the full story from the Star's Rhythm Sachdeva
7:22 a.m. Experts are sounding the alarm on an impending fourth wave of the pandemic - a wave characterized by psychic trauma, burnout, mental illness and economic injury that is projected to be the largest, most enduring health footprint of COVID-19.
I think we're seeing the beginning of an echo pandemic, and I think it's going to worsen," said Dr. David Dozois, a professor of psychology at Western University and a member of Mental Health Research Canada's board of directors.
When Premier Doug Ford announced a provincewide state of emergency on March 17, 2020, very few people could envision the drastic changes to daily life that lay ahead. One year later, a growing body of research on the mental health of Canadians during the pandemic paints an alarming picture of higher rates of reported depression and anxiety, substance abuse and eating disorders, and a cohort of young Canadians deeply struggling with the uncertainty of their future.
The Star breaks down each stage of the pandemic and how fear of the virus, economic uncertainty and the inability to see our loved ones affected our mental health, through the help of ongoing research by the Canadian Mental Health Association, Mental Health Research Canada (MHRC), and other hospitals and agencies in the country.
Read the full story from the Star's Nadine Yousif
6:39 a.m.: Cross-border commuters have lined up at a newly opened testing station on the Polish-German border after Germany reacted to rising coronavirus infections in Poland by imposing new restrictions.
Germany declared Poland a high-incidence area" starting Sunday, meaning that most people now need a negative test taken with the last 48 hours to enter and need to go into quarantine. Regular work commuters have to get tested twice a week.
Germany didn't set up full border checks of the kind that have been place on its border with the two countries' worse-hit neighbour, the Czech Republic, for weeks.
But the dpa news agency reported that there was a long line early Monday morning for a new testing station set up in Frankfurt an der Oder - one of three in Germany's Brandenburg state. About 150 people waited in frosty temperatures to get tested.
6:36 a.m.: AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine provided strong protection against sickness and eliminated hospitalizations and deaths from the disease across all age groups in a late-stage study in the United States, the company announced Monday.
AstraZeneca said its experts did not identify any safety concerns related to the vaccine, including finding no increased risk of rare blood clots identified in Europe.
Although AstraZeneca's vaccine has been authorized in more than 50 countries, it has not yet been given the green light in the U.S. - and has struggled to gain public trust amid a troubled rollout. The study comprised more than 30,000 volunteers, of whom two-thirds were given the vaccine while the rest got dummy shots.
In a statement, AstraZeneca said its COVID-19 vaccine had a 79 per centefficacy rate at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 and was 100 per cent effective in stopping severe disease and hospitalization, though it has not yet published full data. Investigators said the vaccine was effective across all ages, including older people - something previous studies in other countries had failed to establish. Two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine were given to people four weeks apart.
6:35 a.m.: Several provinces are redoubling COVID-19 vaccination efforts today, offering shots to broader swaths of the population.
Ontario has lowered the age threshold for those who can book vaccines through the government's online system starting today, from 80 down to 75.
Also starting today, certain pharmacies and family physicians in some regions will be allowed to administer the Oxford-AstraZeneca shot to anyone 60 or older.
Previously, that vaccine was only offered to those between the ages of 60 and 64, but that has expanded now that the product has been approved for use in older adults.
Meanwhile, Quebec is expected to start vaccinating people 65 and up in Montreal-area pharmacies today, a week after the provincial booking system opened for reservations.
And to the east, New Brunswick is stepping up a program to vaccinate high school staff, saying it expects 4,500 such workers will receive a first dose.
As of Sunday night, government figures show 3.95 million doses of vaccine had been administered across Canada, and nearly 630,000 people had been fully vaccinated.
6:35 a.m.: Ontario residents who are 75 or older can start booking their COVID-19 vaccines through the government's online system starting today.
People in that age group were initially set to become eligible by the first week of April, but the province announced last week it was moving up the date, saying vaccinations are ahead of schedule.
Also starting today, certain pharmacies and family physicians in some regions will be allowed to administer the Oxford-AstraZeneca shot to anyone 60 or older.
Meanwhile, a number of regions are moving to different restriction levels in the province's colour-coded pandemic framework.
The Brant, Chatham-Kent and Leeds, Grenville and Lanark regions are now in the red zone - the second-most restrictive.
6:34 a.m. (corrects number of Pfizer doses expected): Canada's COVID-19 vaccination drive is poised to shift into high gear this week as the federal public health agency prepares to take delivery of the largest number of doses since the launch of the immunization effort.
More than 1.2 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine are set to arrive this week, alongside 846,000 shots of the product developed by Moderna.
Figures from the Public Health Agency of Canada suggest the pace set over the next seven days will mark the start of a sustained delivery ramp-up, with Pfizer-BioNTech expected to continue providing weekly shipments of at least a million doses for the foreseeable future.
The accelerated pace of inoculation deliveries marks a dramatic reversal from earlier in the year, when production delays in Europe caused the pharmaceutical giants producing the coveted shots to pause a number of international shipments.
The torrent of vaccines flooding into the country over the next seven days is set to receive an additional boost in the weeks ahead due in part to a pending exchange between Canada and the United States.
Public Procurement Minister Anita Anand said on Friday that Canada was finalizing an agreement with its neighbour to the south that would see Ottawa receive 1.5 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca shot before the end of the month.
6:33 a.m.: A cabinet committee of Alberta's United Conservative government is scheduled to meet today to decide whether to further ease public health restrictions.
Premier Jason Kenney said last week the key metric is the hospitalization rate, which has been well under 300 for three weeks, but the number of Albertans in hospital with COVID-19 has been climbing.
On Sunday, officials reported there were 282 people in hospital.
The 300 figure was announced in January as the benchmark needed before Alberta could move to the third phase of its reopening plan, which includes opening entertainment venues such as movie theatres and casinos, and also allows adult team sports.
The number of new COVID-19 cases per day in Alberta has also climbed to more than 500 each day since the middle of last week.
Currently, retailers, restaurants, youth sports, and in-person worship services are open with capacity restrictions, but indoor gatherings remain banned and outdoor get-togethers are capped at 10 people.
6:30 a.m.: The federal New Democrats are seeking the support of the House of Commons in calling on the government to eliminate for-profit long-term care.
The NDP is tabling a motion today that calls on the government to transition existing for-profit homes into not-for-profit operations by 2030.
It also urges the government to work with the provinces and territories to halt the licensing of any new for-profit homes.
The motion is non-binding on the minority Liberal government and is set to be debated today, with a vote expected Tuesday.
The NDP unveiled its proposal for the long-term care sector earlier this year, presenting it as a potential election promise as parties ramp up their preparations ahead of a possible campaign.
4 a.m.: The latest numbers on COVID-19 vaccinations in Canada as of 4:00 a.m. ET on Monday March 22, 2021.
In Canada, the provinces are reporting 91,952 new vaccinations administered for a total of 3,954,285 doses given. Nationwide, 629,956 people or 1.7 per cent of the population has been fully vaccinated. The provinces have administered doses at a rate of 10,433.669 per 100,000.
There were no new vaccines delivered to the provinces and territories for a total of 4,773,170 doses delivered so far. The provinces and territories have used 82.84 per cent of their available vaccine supply.
4 a.m.: The latest numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Canada as of 4:00 a.m. ET on Monday March 22, 2021.
There are 933,785 confirmed cases in Canada (35,009 active, 876,100 resolved, 22,676 deaths). The total case count includes 13 confirmed cases among repatriated travellers.
There were 3,269 new cases Sunday. The rate of active cases is 92.12 per 100,000 people. Over the past seven days, there have been a total of 23,585 new cases. The seven-day rolling average of new cases is 3,369.
There were 33 new reported deaths Sunday. Over the past seven days there have been a total of 206 new reported deaths. The seven-day rolling average of new reported deaths is 29. The seven-day rolling average of the death rate is 0.08 per 100,000 people. The overall death rate is 59.67 per 100,000 people.
There have been 26,592,828 tests completed.