Today’s coronavirus news: Ontario reporting 496 new cases of COVID-19; White House says U.S. land borders to reopen to vaccinated travellers Nov. 8;
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.
10:21 a.m. Ontario is reporting 496 new cases of COVID-19; 334 cases are in individuals who are not fully vaccinated or have an unknown vaccination status and 162 are in fully vaccinated individuals, according to a tweet from Health Minister Christine Elliott.
In Ontario, 22,177,830 vaccine doses have been administered. 87.3 per cent of Ontarians 12+ have one dose and nearly 82.8 per cent have two doses.
9:45 a.m. A White House official says the U.S. will announce Friday that it will reopen its land borders to vaccinated non-essential visitors on Nov. 8.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a policy not yet made public, says travellers will need to show proof of vaccination to Customs and Border Protection officials upon request.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is currently working on the operational details, such as what will constitute acceptable proof and which "very limited" exceptions might be allowed.
Vaccines approved by both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the World Health Organization will be accepted for international air travel, and officials expect the same will be the case at land borders.
What's still not clear is whether people who received doses of two different vaccines, a condition that impacts roughly four million Canadians, will be considered to be fully vaccinated.
New York congressman Brian Higgins has written to the CDC to urge the agency to promptly clarify its stance on mixed-dose vaccines.
8 a.m. Should patients waiting for an organ transplant be required to get a COVID-19 vaccine to be considered for the life-saving procedure?
That question is being debated at Ontario transplant centres, now facing the tricky ethical dilemma of whether to limit donor organs to only those who have been fully vaccinated against the virus.
The University Health Network, which runs the largest organ transplant centre in Canada, has decided patients must be fully vaccinated before being put on a wait list for a solid organ transplant, including a heart, lungs or liver. Hospital leaders say the policy - the first to be implemented in Canada - is needed to protect vulnerable patients and ensure the donated organ goes to those with the best chance of survival.
Read the full story from the Star's Megan Ogilvie
7:45 a.m. For the first year of the pandemic, Jasper De Man rarely left his Leslieville neighbourhood. As a director for a Toronto cybersecurity company, he was no stranger to working remotely. But as businesses across the country abruptly shifted to remote work, many became prey to cyberattacks, and he was busier than ever.
His days were packed with back-to-back calls and video meetings, and his wife was working from home alongside him. Yet life started to get lonely.
I went into lockdown thinking Oh, I know how to do this,' " said De Man, who works for ISA Cybersecurity. But there's a difference between hybrid work and 100-per-cent working from home."
De Man was one of more than five million Canadians who began working mostly from home at the pandemic's onset, relishing in a break from the daily commute, morning rush and stiff office attire.
Read the full story from the Star's Christine Dobby
7:27 a.m. (updated) Ontario residents were able to begin downloading their enhanced proof-of-vaccination certificates with a secure QR code on Friday.
Only people born from January to April were able to download the new vaccine receipt on the first day.
Those with birthdays from May to August can download the app on Saturday and people born from September to December can do so Sunday.
As of Monday, everyone can access the portal.
To ensure a smooth user experience, the province is initially making the enhanced vaccine certificate with scannable QR code available for download in cohorts based on an individual's birth month over a period of three days," according to the Ministry of Health.
Read the full story from the Star's Robert Benzie and Rob Ferguson
7:20 a.m. COVID-19 tests in France are no longer free for unvaccinated adults unless they are prescribed by a doctor.
While tests remain free for vaccinated adults and all children under 18, adults who have not gotten their shots will have to pay 22 to 45 euros to get tested as of Friday.
The government introduced the change as a complement to the COVID-19 passes that have been required in France since the summer. To get a pass, people need to show proof of vaccination, a recent negative test or recent recovery from the virus.
The passes are required to visit tourist sites, for hospital visits and on domestic train trips and flights. The pass requirement, announced in July, helped boost France's vaccination rate.
Over 49 million people, or about 74 per cent of the population, are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus in France. Everyone age 12 and older are eligible for shots.
5:54 a.m.: Airport security agents may soon be screening more than your luggage.
The federal government is mulling handing responsibility for verifying passengers' vaccination status to airport officers, rather than airlines - which hope to skip the headache.
Canadian carriers received three consultation papers from Transport Canada this week asking for feedback on putting an agency in charge of the proof of-vaccine validation process, according to three sources who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA), the Crown corporation that oversees passenger and baggage screening at airports, would take on the additional role in barely two weeks if the plan goes ahead following industry feedback.
5:53 a.m.: Premier Doug Ford is set to reveal details this morning about Ontario's vaccine certificate QR code and app.
The government has said the technology would become available Oct. 22.
The app itself is now available for download, but a spokeswoman for Ford says it is for businesses and organizations to scan people's QR codes.
She says those codes will be provided by the province.
Under Ontario's vaccine certificate program, only those who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 - or have a valid medical exemption from a doctor - can access certain settings, such as theatres, nightclubs and restaurant dining rooms.
As it stands, residents must show their vaccine receipt and photo ID to enter those facilities, but the province plans to replace that system with the black-and-white barcodes and an app-based scanner.
5:52 a.m.: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused millions of people to lose their jobs and private health insurance, particularly LGBTQ adults, who reported at higher rates than non-LGBTQ adults that they lost their jobs during the crisis. Consequently, enrolment surged in ACA plans and Medicaid, the state-federal health program for low-income people. Yet many of those plans don't fully cover gender-affirming care, partly because of conservative policies and lack of scientific research on how crucial this care is for transgender patients.
According to a survey by Out2Enroll, a national initiative to connect LGBTQ people with ACA coverage, 46% of the 1,386 silver marketplace plans polled cover all or some medically necessary treatment for gender dysphoria. However, 7% have trans-specific exclusions, 14% have some exclusions, and 33% don't specify.
It's this whack-a-mole situation where plans for the most part do not have blanket exclusions, but where people are still having difficulty getting specific procedures, medications, etcetera, covered," said Kellan Baker, executive director of the Whitman-Walker Institute, a non-profit that focuses on LGBTQ research, policy and education.
Twenty-three states and Washington, D.C., include gender-affirming care in their Medicaid plans. But 10 states exclude such coverage entirely. In 2019, an estimated 152,000 transgender adults were enrolled in Medicaid, a number that has likely grown during the pandemic.
Yet even in states such as California that require their Medicaid programs to cover gender-affirming care, patients still struggle to get injectable estrogen, said Dr. Amy Weimer, an internist who founded the UCLA Gender Health Program. While California Medicaid, or Medi-Cal, covers Depo-Estradiol, doctors must request treatment authorizations to prove their patients need the drug. Weiner said those are rarely approved.
Friday 5:44 a.m.: British health officials said Friday that an estimated 43,000 people may have been wrongly told they don't have the coronavirus because of problems at a private laboratory.
The U.K. Health Security Agency said a lab in Wolverhampton, central England, has been suspended from processing test swabs after reports of false negatives. The faulty results were among tests processed at the Immensa Health Clinic Lab between early September and this week.
The issue was uncovered after some people who were positive for COVID-19 when they took rapid tests went on to show up as negative on more accurate PCR tests.
Around 400,000 samples have been processed through the lab, the vast majority of which will have been negative results, but an estimated 43,000 people may have been given incorrect negative PCR test results," mostly in southwest England, the health agency said.
The agency called the problem an isolated incident attributed to one laboratory" and said the people affected would be contacted and advised to get another test.