Today’s coronavirus news: Ontario reports 443 new cases;Worrying number of pregnant individuals remain unvaccinated; 90% of military personnel fully vaccinated
The latest coronavirus news from Canada and around the world Sunday. This file will be updated throughout the day. Web links to longer stories if available.
11:30 a.m.: Quebec is reporting 532 new COVID-19 cases, along with four more deaths related to the virus.
In a news release Sunday, health officials say hospitalizations fell by six to 303, while the number of patients in intensive care dropped by two to 76.
The seven-day average of cases is 562.
Of the latest reported infections, 341 were among people who were either unvaccinated or who had only received a first dose within the past two weeks.
The province says it vaccinated 11,403 people on Saturday, including more than 7,553 second doses.
The province's public health institute says about 90 per cent of Quebecers aged 12 and older have received at least one dose, while 86 per cent are considered fully vaccinated with two shots.
11:05 a.m.: Dr. Anthony Fauci is saying Sunday that it is really unfortunate" that Gov. Greg Abbott has moved to ban vaccine mandates in the state of Texas.
The nation's leading infectious disease doctor, speaking on Fox News Sunday, said that the Republican governor's decision to block businesses from requiring inoculations would damage public health since vaccines are the most effective means" to stop the spread of COVID-19.
Fauci was largely encouraged by the downward trend of coronavirus hospitalizations and deaths across the nation and suggested that vaccinated individuals could have a normal holiday season with others who have received the shot. But he said that those who have not been vaccinated should continue to avoid gatherings and should wear a mask.
He also suggested that those who received a shot of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine would likely have flexibility to get a booster from either Moderna or Pfizer. The FDA advisory panel ruled last week that anyone 18 and up who had the J&J shot was eligible to get a booster.
11 a.m.: Ontario is reporting another 443 COVID-19 cases and 0 more deaths, according to its latest report released Sunday morning.
Ontario has administered 23,011 vaccine doses since its last daily update, with 22,231,210 vaccines given in total as of 8 p.m. the previous night.
According to the Star's vaccine tracker, 11,400,803 people in Ontario have received at least one shot. That works out to approximately 87.5 per cent of the eligible population 12 years and older, and the equivalent of 76.7 per cent of the total population, including those not yet eligible for the vaccine.
The province says 10,830,407 people have completed their vaccinations, which means they've had both doses. That works out to approximately 83.1 per cent of the eligible population 12 years and older, and the equivalent of 72.9 per cent of the total population, including those not yet eligible for the vaccine.
Click here to read more of this story from Erin LeBlanc.
10:16 a.m.: Ontario is reporting 443 new cases of COVID-19. 288 cases are in individuals who are not fully vaccinated or have an unknown vaccination status and 155 are in fully vaccinated individuals.
10:15 a.m.: A Northern California judge has tentatively ruled that state prison officials acted with deliberate indifference when they caused a deadly coronavirus outbreak at one of the world's most famous prisons last year.
But Marin County Superior Court Judge Geoffrey Howard said vaccines have changed the landscape so much since then that officials are no longer violating inmates' constitutional rights.
The lawsuit stemmed from the botched transfer of infected inmates in May 2020 from a Southern California prison to San Quentin. The coronavirus then quickly sickened 75 per cent of inmates at the prison north of San Francisco, leading to the deaths of 28 inmates and a correctional officer.
10:10 a.m.: Sri Lankan authorities are allowing the reopening of cinemas and restaurants and also permitting wedding receptions as a part of the easing of COVID-19 related restrictions.
Cinemas will be open from next week, but with only 25% occupancy. Restaurants will be allowed to cater to a maximum 50 customers at a time. Wedding receptions are also permitted, but with a maximum of 50 guests.
Banks can accommodate only five clients at a time while gymnasiums can have a maximum of 10.
The government's move to ease restrictions comes amid a sharp decline in COVID-19 cases and deaths over the past few weeks.
However, the government still continues with the ban on public gatherings while restrictions are imposed on public transport and trains are still halted.
10:01 a.m.: A senior military commander in Western Canada says he doesn't expect much opposition from Canadian Forces personnel over mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations.
Ottawa is requiring federal employees, including members of the military, be fully vaccinated by the end of this month. The government also expects employers in federally regulated industries, including banks and airlines, to do the same.
Brig.-Gen. Bill Fletcher, who's responsible for Western Canada's 3rd Canadian Division, oversees the training of Canadian soldiers and operations from the Pacific Ocean to Thunder Bay, Ont.
There are almost 12,000 regular and reserve forces under his control.
It's been made very clear by the government that we will follow the same direction that the government has given the public service and we will enforce mandatory vaccines across the Canadian military," Fletcher said in an interview from his office in Edmonton.
He said more than 90 per cent of Canadian military personnel are already double vaccinated and he's not worried about any pushback from what he calls a small percentage.
We'd already been dealing with the implication for deployments ... of non-vaccinated folks going into a COVID-hot environment or going into an international setting where the host country has said, you will be double vaccinated,'" he said.
Those folks ultimately have to make a decision on whether they'll be vaccinated."
He said he couldn't comment on what would happen to personnel who are not vaccinated. But the federal government has said public servants will be put on unpaid administrative leave if they aren't vaccinated by Oct. 29.
9:35 a.m.: New Zealand health care workers administered a record number of vaccine jabs Saturday as the nation held a festival aimed at getting more people inoculated against the coronavirus.
Musicians, sports stars and celebrities pitched in for the Vaxathon" event, which was broadcast on television and online for eight hours straight. By late afternoon, more than 120,000 people had gotten shots, eclipsing the daily record of 93,000 set in August.
A throwback to TV fundraising telethon" events that were popular from the 1970s through the 1990s, it comes as New Zealand faces its biggest threat since the pandemic began, with an outbreak of the delta variant spreading through the largest city of Auckland and beyond.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who chatted with motorists at a drive-through vaccination center in Wellington, initially set a target of 100,000 jabs for the day but upped that to 150,000 after the first target was met.
She also set a target of 25,000 shots for Indigenous Maori, whose vaccination numbers have been lagging and who have been hit hard by the latest outbreak.
9 a.m.: Faced with long lineups and heavy demand, health officials in New Brunswick were forced to cut short the distribution of free COVID-19 rapid-test kits at three locations on Saturday.
The province announced Thursday that the kits would be handed out in Moncton, Perth Andover and Grand Falls - areas that have been subjected to strict health-protection measures since Oct. 9 because of a surge in infections and hospitalizations.
The distribution program was supposed to take place between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. on Saturday, but it was suspended by 11:30 a.m. in Moncton and by 1 p.m. in Perth Andover and Grand Falls.
The kits were made available to those without COVID-19 symptoms living in the so-called circuit-breaker zones, which include COVID-19 hot spots in the upper Saint John River Valley, Edmundston in western New Brunswick, and the Moncton area in the province's southeastern region.
By 9 a.m. on Saturday, the RCMP were reporting traffic jams near the Moncton location, a parking lot at the Magic Mountain amusement park.
Local residents turned to social media to vent their anger.
You should arrest the idiot who thought this was a good plan," said one observer on Twitter, who was responding to the RCMP's post.
Another critic was more blunt: LOL. Fail."
And one person said the distribution of the kits, which can be used at home, was long overdue. But as soon as I saw only one spot for pick up in the entire area on a Saturday, I knew it would be a nightmare. There should be multiple spots, in multiple towns/cities."
The province has pledged to offer wider distribution of rapid-test kits starting Monday at 20 locations across the province.
8:45 a.m.: Arizona's three state universities will comply with federal mandates for government contractors and require their employees to be fully vaccinated for COVID-19 by Dec. 8 unless granted exemptions, officials announced Friday.
The requirement by the University of Arizona, Arizona State University and Northern Arizona University includes undergraduate and graduate students who are also university employees, the state Board of Regents said in a statement.
The statement cited President Joe Biden's executive order regarding on compliance with federal COVID-19 workplace guidance and said the universities have hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts, funding critical research, employment and educational efforts."
We respect individual opinions regarding the vaccine and will include disability (including medical) and religious accommodations consistent with federal rules," the statement added.
A regents spokeswoman did not immediately respond when asked what would happen to an employee not complying with the mandate.
8:07 a.m.: Dr. Mariam Hanna noticed an uptick in requests for allergy assessments in her Burlington, Ont., clinic after the province began implementing COVID-19 vaccine certificates last month.
Whether people have held off on getting vaccinated because of a past reaction, or are seeking an exemption to inoculation mandates, Hanna said a previous allergic response doesn't mean you can't get your shots.
Allergists across the country have safely inoculated most patients who come into their clinics, regardless of allergy history, she said.
Be it as an excuse or a misunderstanding or some miscommunication there, we are certainly getting a lot of referrals because of (vaccine rules)," said Hanna, an assistant clinical professor at McMaster University.
Most of the time, it isn't reason for exemption."
Hanna said many of the patients she assesses are concerned about previous reactions to non-COVID-19 vaccines. But because the mRNA jabs from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna are different from typical inoculations, those past reactions usually don't come up again.
Other patients are concerned about receiving a second mRNA dose if they had an adverse reaction to the first. But she said many patients mistake common non-life threatening reactions - including rash or swelling at the injection site - for an allergy.
It's only the very, very few patients that have had a systemic reaction, typically within 15 to 20 minutes of receiving the first dose, that we want to be careful about," Hanna said. Most of the side effects that we expect with a vaccine, those are not contraindications for exemption.
And sometimes you need an allergist to help clarify it."
7:56 a.m.: In one recent week, a New Yorker got a free COVID-19 test in a jiffy, with results the next day, while a Coloradan had to shell out $50 for a test two cities from her hometown after a frantic round of pharmacy-hopping. A Montanan drove an hour each way to get a test, wondering if, this time, it would again take five days to get results.
While COVID-19 testing is much easier to come by than it was early in the pandemic, the ability to get a test - and timely results - can vary widely nationwide. A fragmented testing system, complicated logistics, technician burnout and squirrelly spikes in demand are contributing to this bumpy ride.
We're still where we were 18 months ago," said Rebecca Stanfel, the Montana woman who had to wait five days for test results in Helena last month after being exposed to someone with the virus.
Unpredictable waits can be a problem for those trying to plan travel, return to school from a quarantine - or even get lifesaving monoclonal antibody treatment within the optimal window if they do have COVID-19.
The White House said in early October it plans to buy $1 billion worth of rapid antigen tests to help improve access to the hard-to-find over-the-counter kits. But people are also facing problems getting molecular testing, including the gold-standard PCR tests.
Public health labs are no longer hamstrung by supply bottlenecks on individual test components such as swabs or reagents, said Kelly Wroblewski, director of infectious disease programs for the Association of Public Health Laboratories. But they are still bearing a large testing load, which she had expected to shift more to commercial or hospital-based labs by now.
7:45 a.m.: It's been six months since Ontario prioritized pregnant people for COVID vaccines following warnings by health-care providers who were seeing alarming numbers of pregnant patients arriving in hospital severely sick with the virus.
Since then, there has been an ongoing push to vaccinate this vulnerable population.
Pregnant people with COVID are at significantly higher risk of severe illness requiring hospitalization and intensive care. During the third wave, some Ontario hospitals saw more pregnant people in intensive care units than in the previous two waves combined. And in recent weeks in Alberta, amid that province's devastating fourth wave, ICUs reported a surge of pregnant patients, some of whom delivered babies while sedated on a ventilator.
With data accumulating from around the world so far showing no safety concerns for pregnant people receiving COVID vaccines, dozens of physician groups and health agencies continue to implore pregnant people to get vaccinated.
Yet a worrying number remain unvaccinated.
Read more in Megan Ogilvie's piece, The science is clear: pregnant Ontarians should get the COVID vaccine. Why are so many rejecting it?"
Sunday 7:43 a.m.: Russia is reporting its largest daily number of new coronavirus infections, more than 70 per cent up on the number a month ago as the country faces a sustained rise in cases.
The national coronavirus task force on Sunday said 34,303 new infections were recorded in the previous day, compared with the 20,174 reported Sept. 19.
The death toll of 999 was barely lower than the record 1,002 deaths reported on Saturday.
Russian authorities have tried to speed up the pace of vaccinations with lotteries, bonuses and other incentives, but widespread vaccine skepticism and conflicting signals from officials stymied the efforts. The government said this week that about 43 million Russians, or some 29 per cent of the country's nearly 146 million people, are fully vaccinated.
Despite the mounting toll, the Kremlin has ruled out a new nationwide lockdown like the one early on in the pandemic that badly hurt the economy, eroding President Vladimir Putin's popularity. Instead, it has delegated the power to enforce coronavirus restrictions to regional authorities.
Some of Russia's 85 regions have restricted attendance at large public events and limited access to theatres, restaurants and other venues. However, daily life is going on largely as normal in Moscow, St. Petersburg and many other Russian cities.