Today’s coronavirus news: Ontario reporting 678 new cases of COVID-19; TDSB votes unanimously for mandatory vaccines
The latest coronavirus news from Canada and around the world Thursday. This file will be updated throughout the day. Web links to longer stories if available.
10:20 a.m. Ontario is reporting 678 new cases of COVID-19; 537 cases are in individuals who are not fully vaccinated or have an unknown vaccination status and 141 are in fully vaccinated individuals. In Ontario, 20,605,405 vaccine doses have been administered. 82.5 per cent of Ontarians 12+ have one dose and 75.5 per cent have two doses.
9:45 a.m. Mississauga is mandating vaccination for city employees and volunteers but, unlike Toronto, is offering those who don't provide proof of vaccination before the deadline the option of taking a COVID-19 test to prove they aren't infected, tweets the Star's David Rider.
9:05 a.m. The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits rose for the first time in five weeks even though the economy and job market have been recovering briskly from the coronavirus pandemic.
Jobless claims edged up by 4,000 to 353,000 from 349,000 a week earlier, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The four-week average of claims, which smooths out week-to-week volatility, fell by 11,500 to 366,500 - a pandemic low.
The weekly count has fallen more or less steadily since topping 900,000 in early January as the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines has helped the economy - encouraging businesses to reopen or expand hours and luring consumers out of their homes to restaurants, bars and shops.
But a resurgence of cases linked to the highly contagious delta variant has clouded the economic outlook. And claims already remain high by historic standards: Before the pandemic tore through the economy in March 2020, the weekly pace amounted to around 220,000 a week.
8:23 a.m. Ontario's decreasing reproduction number for COVID-19 is a good sign, but it doesn't guarantee that we'll be out of the fourth wave any time soon, an expert tells the Star.
The province's reproduction number has been decreasing steadily since it hit a peak of 1.44 on Aug. 12. The province's latest reproduction number, measured weekly, is from Aug. 11-17 and sits at 1.25.
The R metric in epidemiology measures the spread of infection in a population. In theory, it allows disease modellers to work out the extent of the spread of infection, but not the speed at which the infection grows.
Read the full story from the Star's Celina Gallardo and Jenna Moon
8:08 a.m. Keith Baybayon is looking forward to going back to class this fall. But it's the commute he's not so keen on.
The 16-year-old is heading into his senior year at Marshall McLuhan Catholic Secondary School in midtown Toronto. After the pandemic limited in-person attendance last year, this fall the plan is for students like him to be in school every day, which will hopefully mean Baybayon's final year is a more normal one.
But to get to class Baybayon, like thousands of other Toronto students, will have to rely on the TTC. He will need to take two bus routes to get to school - the 52 Lawrence West and 61 Avenue Road - and the thought of being on crowded transit vehicles for more than an hour each day makes him more nervous than the prospect of sitting in a class full of students.
Read the full story from the Star's Ben Spurr
7:55 a.m. Unvaccinated COVID patients do not deserve ICU beds."
I have no empathy left for the willfully unvaccinated. Let them die."
In the no-holds barred world of Twitter, comments like these, where the vaccinated say the unvaccinated deserve what they get, are becoming increasingly common. But even in the minds of people on the street, these sentiments are swirling in collective thoughts as the fourth wave of infections intensifies and vaccination rates plateau.
According to a recent Angus Reid poll most vaccinated Canadians are indifferent to the unvaccinated getting sick with the virus, with 83 per cent saying they have no sympathy for those who choose not to get the COVID-19 vaccine and then fall ill. Anecdotally, patience is even wearing thin among health-care professionals.
Read the full story from the Star's Nadine Yousif
7:40 a.m. Hong Kong said Thursday that domestic workers from Indonesia and the Philippines will be allowed to fly into the city starting Aug. 30, a move expected to ease a shortage of helpers in the city.
Hong Kong has approximately 370,000 domestic workers from Indonesia and the Philippines. Flights have been banned from both countries because they were considered high-risk for the coronavirus; under current arrangements, only fully-vaccinated Hong Kong residents from high-risk countries are allowed to enter the city.
Under the new arrangements, domestic helpers from Indonesia and Philippines must be fully vaccinated and have a working visa before they are allowed into Hong Kong. They must also quarantine for 21 days at a specific hotel, with the costs to be borne by their employers.
Authorities conceded that the number of arrivals will also be restricted.
Hong Kong, with its entry restrictions and social distancing measures, has kept its reported COVID-19 cases to about 12,000, with just 212 deaths.
Indonesia has so far reported over 4 million cases and the Philippines nearly 1.9 million.
7:04 a.m. (updated) Ontario's largest school board will require its staff to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
Trustees for the Toronto District School Board voted unanimously in favour of the measure at a Wednesday-night meeting.
TDSB staff will develop a procedure that will require all workers, trustees and visitors "to disclose and provide proof of vaccination status and to be fully vaccinated to help protect the health and safety of both staff and students."
Those who don't get their shots will have to attend an education session on the benefits of vaccination.
There will be exemptions for those who are legally entitled to accommodations.
The board says it's still up for debate whether the policy will include regular testing -- a cornerstone of the province's plan for unvaccinated education workers.
The TDSB says the policy -- which it plans to have up and running by the time classes resume on Sept. 9 -- will also include deadlines for unvaccinated people to disclose whether they've received their first and second doses.
The trustees also voted to send a letter to the local public health agency and the province, urging officials to add the COVID-19 vaccine to the list of compulsory shots for all eligible students.
5:44 a.m.: Plans to turn the Broadway hit Come From Away" into a big-screen movie musical have been indefinitely placed on hold because COVID-19 delivered an unexpected blow to the project, say the Canadian writers of the musical.
David Hein and Irene Sankoff were well into the script stages of their film adaptation.
We were supposed to go into production out in Newfoundland and then all the borders closed," Sankoff said in a webcam interview from Seattle.
I think it cost a lot more than anyone wanted to, just because of COVID, so we're in a holding pattern for that at the moment."
The Tony-winning Come From Away" is inspired by the real-life story of residents in Gander, N.L., who hosted thousands of unexpected plane passengers forced to land in the small town after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The writers says they remain hopeful their script will be turned into a movie when the time is right.
5:44 a.m.: The international scientists sent to China by the World Health Organization to look for the origins of the coronavirus say the search has stalled" and warn the window for getting to the bottom of the mystery is closing fast.
In a commentary published Wednesday in the journal Nature, the experts say the origins investigation is at a critical juncture" requiring urgent collaboration. They noted among other things that Chinese officials are still reluctant to share some raw data, citing concerns over patient confidentiality.
Increasing numbers of American scientists have called for two Chinese labs to be investigated, a request China has dismissed as scapegoating."
Meanwhile, a U.S. intelligence review ordered up by President Joe Biden proved inconclusive about the virus's origin, including whether it jumped from an animal to a human or escaped from a Chinese lab, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
Earlier this year, the WHO sent a team of experts to Wuhan, where the first human COVID-19 cases were detected in December 2019, to probe what might have triggered the pandemic now blamed for nearly 4.5 million deaths worldwide, with more than 10,000 people a day succumbing despite more than five billion doses of vaccine administered.
In their analysis, published in March, the WHO team concluded the virus probably jumped to humans from animals, and they described the possibility of a laboratory leak as extremely unlikely."
But the WHO experts said their report was intended only as a first step and added, The window of opportunity for conducting this crucial inquiry is closing fast: any delay will render some of the studies biologically impossible."
5:43 a.m.: A man upset over state-ordered coronavirus restrictions has been sentenced to just over six years in prison for planning to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
Ty Garbin apologized and was sentenced Wednesday. He admitted his role in the alleged scheme weeks after being arrested last fall.
He is among six men charged in federal court but the only one who has pleaded guilty.
Garbin says they trained at his property near Luther, Michigan, constructing a shoot house" to resemble Whitmer's vacation home and assaulting it with firearms."
The government noted Garbin's exceptional" co-operation and asked the judge to give him credit for helping investigators reinforce their case against his co-defendants. He's likely to testify at any trial.
The 25-year-old aviation mechanic told U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker: I cannot even begin to imagine the amount of stress and fear her family felt because of my actions. And for that I am truly sorry."
The judge said the constitution is designed to ensure that we work out our fundamental and different views peacefully, not at the point of a gun, not with some other blunt force threat or a kidnapping conspiracy."
Prosecutors recommended a nine-year prison term. But Jonker went shorter, at 6 1/4 years, saying he was convinced that Garbin was an excellent prospect" to stay out of trouble when released from prison.
Thursday 5:39 a.m.: Steven Lachance, a Montreal-based digital security analyst and entrepreneur, says he was worried when the Quebec government announced it would impose a vaccine passport system across the province to reduce COVID-19 transmission.
But after he took a look at the smartphone applications that became available for download Wednesday, he said Quebec's system should be the model for other provinces. Lachance and another tech expert interviewed by The Canadian Press say the applications do what they claim to do and are not capable of secretly gathering user data.
I was very skeptical when I first heard of the government's intentions around this kind of technology - it could have gone wrong in so many ways," Lachance said in an interview.
Instead, Lachance said he was pleasantly surprised to see the government adopt an international standard that he described as unquestionably much better than anything (the government) could have come up with internally."
That standard, known as the SMART Health Card, is also being used for vaccine passports in New York state, Louisiana and California. The technology is based around a quick response code containing a person's name, date of birth and information about the vaccinations they have received.
Starting Sept. 1, Quebec residents will need to show proof of vaccination to visit businesses the provincial government deems non-essential, such as bars, clubs and restaurants. That proof is in the form of a quick response code - or QR code - distributed to vaccinated residents by the Health Department.
On Wednesday, Quebec released the applications that will be used to power its vaccine passport system on Apple devices: VaxiCode Verif for businesses and VaxiCode for patrons. Android versions are expected to be released later in the week. Quebec residents are encouraged to download VaxiCode and upload their QR code into it.