Today’s coronavirus news: Ontario reporting 340 cases of COVID-19; border workers start job action as contract negotiations continue; Quebec considering vaccine mandate for health workers
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.
1:40 p.m. New Brunswick health officials are reporting six new cases of COVID-19 today, all in the Moncton region.
Officials have reported 38 infections in the Moncton area since the province lifted all pandemic-related restrictions on July 30.
They did not provide the age breakdown for today's cases, but as of yesterday, 23 infections in the Moncton region involved people in their 20s.
Online government data indicates vaccination rates in the province are lowest among that age group.
Nova Scotia's chief medical officer of health, Dr. Robert Strang, said Thursday the cluster in the Moncton area involved unvaccinated young people, adding that his office was keeping an eye on that province's rising caseload.
Nova Scotia reported one new case of COVID-19 today and 13 active reported infections.
1:37 p.m. Ontario marked three weeks on Friday since entering the third step of its pandemic reopening plan but it has yet to hit the vaccination targets set for restrictions to roll back further.
The province previously progressed through earlier phases of its reopening within 21 days, but the government has established three firm thresholds that must be met before nearly all public health measures drop away.
Eighty per cent of all Ontarians aged 12 and older must have at least one shot, 75 per cent need to be fully immunized and all public health units must have fully vaccinated 70 per cent of eligible residents before the province can move on from Step 3.
The first condition is the only one that has been met so far.
As of Friday, 72 per cent of adults had been fully immunized, and only about half of Ontario's 34 health units had met the third condition.
Health units across the province are now getting creative, with vaccine clinics at farmers' markets, fire halls and beaches in addition to mobile teams and traditional sites, as they try to boost immunization rates.
Residents and visitors aged 12 years and older are encouraged to add getting their COVID-19 vaccines to their summer to do list," the Simcoe-Muskoka health unit said as it urged individuals to get their shots.
The region, where 68 per cent of all eligible residents were fully vaccinated as of Friday, said it is aiming for 90 per cent full inoculation to achieve herd immunity and protect those who don't qualify for shots.
It is offering vaccines at parks, beaches, farmers' markets, sports complexes and shopping centres, with staff wearing blue shirts and employee badges for identification.
All health units have reported at least 65 per cent full vaccine coverage. Seventeen units had fully vaccinated more than 70 per cent of eligible residents as of Friday. Eleven others had rates of 68 or 69 per cent.
12 p.m. Quebec is considering imposing a vaccine mandate for health-care workers amid a rise in the number of new COVID-19 cases in the province.
Ewan Sauves, a spokesman for Premier Francois Legault, said today in an email the government is looking at making COVID-19 vaccination mandatory for health workers but not for other public sector employees.
The news comes a day after Legault said his government will impose a vaccine passport system to curb the spread of COVID-19.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday his government is mulling vaccine mandates for federal workers and employees in federally regulated industries.
11:34 a.m. The current Delta-fueled COVID-19 surge in the U.S. is sending more children to hospitals locally and across the nation, a sign, doctors said, that adults need to do a better job of protecting kids, especially those under 12 who cannot get vaccinated.
Nationally, child hospitalizations for COVID-19 increased 84 per cent between July 10 and July 31, from 665 to 1,224, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In this region, the number of pediatric hospitalizations rose from four to 13 in New Jersey and from 20 to 28 in Pennsylvania between July 10 and July 31. Though rising, the hospitalization rates remain low; 1.1 per 100,000 children in Pennsylvania and 0.7 per 100,000 in New Jersey.
According to a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Children's Hospital Association, only 0.1 per cent to 1.9 per cent of all known cases in children lead to hospitalization. The true percentage is likely even lower because many infected children are not tested, said Sara Bode, who is director of school health services at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, and chair of an AAP committee on school health.
10:30 a.m. Arkansas lawmakers on Friday left the state's mask mandate ban in place, ending a session called to revisit the prohibition for schools because of the state's COVID-19 surge.
The majority-Republican Legislature adjourned the special session that GOP Gov. Asa Hutchinson had called to consider rolling back the ban for some schools. Hutchinson signed the ban in April but said the change was needed to protect children under 12 who can't get vaccinated as the state's virus cases and hospitalizations skyrocket.
A House panel on Thursday rejected two measures to allow some school districts to issue mask requirements.
There had been growing calls to lift the ban before school starts statewide later this month. The ban is already being challenged in two lawsuits, including one from an east Arkansas school district where more than 800 students and staff have quarantined because of a COVID-19 outbreak.
Pediatricians and health officials have said that masks in schools are needed to protect children, as the delta variant and Arkansas' low vaccination rate fuels the state's spiraling cases.
But Hutchinson faced heavy opposition from fellow Republicans, who had been inundated with calls and messages from opponents of masks in schools.
He said this week he regretted signing the mask mandate ban, telling reporters that in hindsight, I wish that had not become law." Hutchinson noted he did so when the state's cases were much lower and that the Legislature could have easily overridden him had he vetoed the measure.
10:20 a.m. (updated) Ontario is reporting 340 new COVID-19 cases and 18 deaths from the virus today, including several deaths that occurred more than six weeks ago.
The province says 16 of the deaths, including one of a person under the age of 19, were reported for the first time on Friday due to data cleaning work.
The case numbers are based on 23,448 tests.
There were 110 patients in intensive care with COVID-related critical illness and 76 people on ventilators.
9:30 a.m. The union representing 9,000 Canada Border Services Agency workers says some job actions began Friday as bargaining with the government continued.
Our bargaining team representing CBSA employees has been in mediation with CBSA and Treasury all night and through to this morning, and we're giving them a bit more time to negotiate at the table," the Public Service Alliance of Canada and its Customs and Immigration Union said in a Friday morning statement.
In the meantime, work-to-rule actions are underway at border crossings and airports across the country."
It didn't immediately specify what that entails.
The union said it had been bargaining with the government since 2018 and it served a strike notice on Tuesday.
The dispute comes as Canada is preparing to allow fully vaccinated Americans to visit without having to quarantine starting Aug. 9.
Borders will open to travellers from other countries with the required doses of a COVID-19 shot on Sept. 7.
6:40 a.m. Chinese President Xi Jinping has pledged that 2 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines would be supplied to the world through this year, increasing China's commitment as the largest exporter of the shots.
Xi's announcement was delivered late Thursday at a vaccine forum China hosted virtually.
The figure likely includes the 770 million doses China has already donated or exported already and it's not clear if it includes a COVAX agreement for Chinese producers to supply 550 million doses.
Xi also promised to donate $100 million to the UN-backed COVAX program, which aims to distribute vaccines to low- and middle-income countries. Vaccine distributions have been starkly unequal, as wealthy countries now consider issuing booster shots to their citizens and poorer nations struggle to get enough vaccines for a first dose.
Hundreds of millions of Chinese shots, the vast majority of which are from Sinopharm and Sinovac, have already been administered to people in many countries across the world. However, there are concerns about whether they protect adequately against the new, highly transmissible delta variant.
Friday 5:22 a.m. Thousands of people jammed coronavirus vaccination centers in the Philippine capital, defying social distancing restrictions, after false news spread that unvaccinated residents would be deprived of cash aid or barred from leaving home during a two-week lockdown that started Friday.
Officials placed Metropolitan Manila back under lockdown until Aug. 20, as a new spike in COVID-19 infections that health officials say could be due to the highly contagious delta variant threatens to overwhelm hospitals. Three other regions, including nearby Laguna province, were also placed under lockdown until Aug. 15.
Only authorized workers for essential businesses and residents on medical emergencies or food-buying errands can venture out. An eight-hour curfew was imposed in the capital region starting at 8 p.m. and police checkpoints were set up in city boundaries.
A day before the lockdown, false news spread on social media that unvaccinated residents would either be prohibited from leaving their homes to go to work or deprived of 1,000 pesos ($20) aid. It sent large crowds heading for vaccination centers in the cities of Manila, Las Pinas and Antipolo even without prior registrations.
Thousands lined up for several blocks in designated government centers and shopping malls to get the jabs, at times sparking arguments and complaints and snarling traffic.
In Manila alone, up to 22,000 people showed up outside vaccination centers before dawn. People descended in groups and arrived in vans from nearby provinces, some rowdily removing barricades," city officials said, citing police reports. Many were not registered under Manila's immunization program.
Police were forced to stop vaccinations in at least one of the shopping malls and asked the crowds to return home.
Friday 2 a.m. China recorded another 80 locally transmitted cases of COVID-19 on Friday, as the country seeks to control its widest flare-up since the original outbreak with a combination of lockdowns, mass testing and travel restrictions.
Of the new cases, 58 were found in the eastern city of Yangzhou in Jiangsu province, where the highly contagious delta variant spread among airport workers in the provincial capital of Nanjing. Other cases were found in six provinces from tropical Hainan in the south to Inner Mongolia bordering on Russia.
That has taken the number of cases linked to the Nanjing outbreak to more than 460 since the middle of last month, prompting renewed travel restrictions, community lockdowns and the sealing off of Zhangjiajie, a city of 1.5 million.
Such measures have been implemented with much success following local outbreaks under China's zero tolerance" approach to the pandemic, although they are being seen as taking a major toll on society and the economy, stirring speculation that a new approach may be needed that allows for the virus to circulate to some manageable degree.
Thursday 9 p.m. Moving into August, two things seem inevitable: a fourth wave of COVID-19, and a federal election.
With case counts rising, vaccination rates slowing, and the government's recent decision to extend rent and wage subsidies, the business community is concerned that election politics will overshadow their needs.
Health experts have said that a fourth wave, driven by the Delta variant of COVID-19, is likely. Meanwhile, as of July 24, more than 63 per cent of Canadians 12 and older were fully vaccinated, while cases of COVID infections are creeping up in some provinces - British Columbia's rolling seven-day average almost tripled recently. Quebec's seven-day average, too, recently more than doubled. And though Alberta recently ended isolation requirements, contact tracing and asymptomatic testing, its vaccination rates have lagged behind national numbers, and it too is seeing cases rise.
Last month, the Canadian Travel and Tourism Roundtable called on the federal government to introduce a reopening plan before calling an election. And the Canadian Chamber of Commerce was among industry groups to ask it to prioritize a reopening plan over an election.
Read the full story from the Star's Rosa Saba
Thursday 8 p.m. California will require all of its roughly 2.2 million health care workers and long term care workers to be fully vaccinated by Sept. 30 as the nation's most populous state is losing ground in the battle against new infections of a more dangerous coronavirus variant.
The order, issued Thursday by the California Department of Public Health, is different than what Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said last month when he announced health care workers would have the choice of either getting vaccinated or submitting to weekly testing.
Now, the order does not give health care workers a choice. It says all must be fully vaccinated by the end of September, with exceptions for people who decline the vaccine because of a religious belief or workers who cannot be inoculated because of a qualifying medical reason backed up by a note signed by a licensed medical professional.
The change comes as California is seeing the fastest increase in new virus cases since the start of the pandemic, averaging 18.3 new cases per 100,000 people a day. Most of the state's new infections are caused by the delta variant, a more contagious version of the coronavirus that the state says may cause more severe illness."
Thursday 7:21 p.m. Moderna's coronavirus vaccine booster appears to produce a robust" antibody response against the fast-spreading delta variant, the company said Thursday as it warned that a third shot would likely" be needed this fall.
The Massachusetts-based drugmaker revealed in a quarterly-earnings report that its original two-dose vaccine regimen remains highly effective through six months after the second shot, but the company believes that the increased force of infection resulting from delta" will lead to a surge of breakthrough infections in vaccinated people over the next few months.
The Delta variant is said to be as contagious as chickenpox and has already become the dominant strain in the U.S. and many other countries.
We are pleased that our COVID-19 vaccine is showing durable efficacy of 93% through six months, but recognize that the Delta variant is a significant new threat so we must remain vigilant," Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said in a statement.
Thursday 5 p.m. British Columbia's top doctor says the surge in COVID-19 cases is fuelled by those between the ages of 20 and 40 who are unvaccinated or have only had one dose, The Canadian Press reports.
The latest daily case count reached 342 on Wednesday, a figure not seen since late May, but Dr. Bonnie Henry says clusters of infections were expected, according to CP.
Henry says the key is that health officials aren't seeing widespread transmission to at-risk groups, such as seniors, because they have a high rate of immunization.
She says pandemic modelling shows the Delta variant is more transmissible, which means immunization rates must go up, and even a small increase in vaccinations makes a difference.
Health Minister Adrian Dix says people aren't obliged to get vaccinated, but warns that the unimmunized might face consequences at work, and certainly will, if they hope to travel outside of the country.
The government's promotion of Walk-in Wednesday" saw more than 16,500 people go to clinics across the province without an appointment to get vaccinated, with more than 6,000 going for their first shot.