Today’s coronavirus news: Ontario reporting 4,183 people hospitalized with COVID-19 and 580 in the ICU; WestJet cancels 1 in 5 February flights
The latest coronavirus news from Canada and around the world Tuesday. This file will be updated throughout the day. Web links to longer stories if available.
11:27 a.m. Toronto Public Health chief Dr. Eileen de Villa says with in-person learning about to return, we continue to see a high level of COVID spread, including hospitalizations, ICU admissions and deaths as Omicron rages."
It's still too early to say Omicron wave has plateaued or started to decline, but public health officials are seeing signs that may be the case.
11:24 a.m. African health officials aim to reach an agreement to obtain Pfizer Inc.'s COVID-19 pill within weeks, which would bring a key virus-fighting tool to the continent.
If you have such drugs, people can test and treat themselves at home and not overwhelm the health system," John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, told Bloomberg's The Year Ahead conference. That is why treatments are very important."
Africa is seeking supplies of Pfizer's Paxlovid amid concerns that less wealthy countries could be left behind as they have been with vaccines, despite licensing agreements to broaden availability of Covid medicines. Merck & Co. said Tuesday it will supply the global relief organization Unicef with up to 3 million courses of molnupiravir, developed with Ridgeback Biotherapeutics LP.
11:10 a.m. WestJet Airlines Inc. is cutting 20 per cent of its February flights as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to surge.
The Calgary-based airline says the move marks a response to "government barriers" amid the Omicron variant, which has affected staffing levels.
The Public Health Agency of Canada advised against non-essential travel abroad in mid-December, while a requirement that international travellers quarantine until on-arrival molecular tests come back negative has further dissuaded visitors, the sector says.
10:50 a.m. New York City's coronavirus surge is declining, with cases and hospitalizations dropping dramatically, health commissioner Dave Chokshi said on Tuesday.
The daily number of cases dropped to 17,296 over the last week, down from a peak of 42,576 on Jan. 3. Despite the decline, cases remain elevated from October and November, when infections were hovering around 1,000 a day. Chokshi said the cases and hospitalizations remain concentrated among unvaccinated New Yorkers.
The city is also still exploring a remote schooling option for the more than 200,000 children who remain absent from public schools. Officials said that in-person schooling remains a priority but that there are discussions with teachers' unions to add remote options.
10:21 a.m. Ontario is reporting a record 4,183 people in hospital with COVID-19, including 580 people in intensive care.
That's up from 3,887 in hospitals on Monday, though not all hospitals report data from the weekends.
There are 37 new COVID-19 deaths being reported.
Ontario is reporting 7,086 new cases of COVID-19, though Public Health Ontario has said the number is likely higher because of a current policy restricting who can access tests.
10:16 a.m. Boris Johnson denied he was warned not to go ahead with a party in his office garden during the first pandemic lockdown in May 2020, after his former aide accused the U.K. prime minister of lying over the affair.
I can tell you categorically that nobody told me and said that this was something that was against the rules, that was a breach of the COVID rules or you're doing something that wasn't a work event," Johnson said in a pooled interview broadcast Tuesday. Frankly I can't imagine why on earth it would have gone ahead anyway, or why it would have been allowed to go ahead."
Johnson is battling to save his political career, with members of his ruling Conservative Party furious over allegations Johnson and his staff broke the pandemic rules they had set for the British public to follow. The issue has dominated front pages for weeks, while support for the Tories has slumped.
9:45 a.m. Hong Kong will cull more than 2,000 hamsters and ban the import of small animals after a pet shop worker, a customer and at least 11 hamsters tested positive for the Delta variant of the coronavirus.
Officials said Tuesday that it was not clear that the virus had been transmitted to humans from imported hamsters. But they called on residents to surrender hamsters imported since Dec. 22 to be tested and euthanized to prevent any further spread.
They're excreting the virus, and the virus can infect other animals, other hamsters and also human beings," said Thomas Sit, assistant director of Hong Kong's Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation department. We don't want to cull all the animals, but we have to protect public health and animal health. We have no choice - we have to make a firm decision."
9:15 a.m. Australia recorded its highest number of daily COVID deaths of the pandemic Tuesday, 74, and the state of Victoria declared a state of emergency for its hospital system, which is buckling under the strain of staff illness and soaring coronavirus cases.
James Merlino, Victoria's deputy premier, said the emergency measure could postpone leave for thousands of health care workers and defer nonessential services. It will take effect at noon Wednesday.
We've got more than 4,000 health care workers unavailable right now, alongside a vast number of patients with COVID-19 who require hospitalization," Merlino said.
On Tuesday, 1,152 people were hospitalized for the coronavirus in the state and 127 were in intensive care, with 43 of those on a ventilator. In the past two days, 11 people have died of the coronavirus, Merlino said, adding that cases were expected to spike in the next two to four weeks.
8:50 a.m. Russian authorities said Tuesday that the government is shortening the required isolation period for people infected with the coronavirus from 14 to seven days.
The move comes as Russia faces another surge of COVID-19 cases, this time driven by the rapid spread of the highly contagious omicron variant.
Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova, who runs the country's coronavirus task force, said health officials were optimizing our approaches to quarantine and testing of our citizens, including shortening the quarantine period to seven days."
8:30 a.m. When the Ontario government created a new law for alcohol sales to help restaurants and bars through COVID-19 lockdowns, it inadvertently led to a whole new type of business: bottle shops.
Restaurants and bars were able to pivot to selling take-out alcohol alongside food and snacks to stay afloat. And when indoor dining reopened, many continued the bottle-shop service. Now, new stand-alone bottle shops offering their own curated selection of alcoholic beverages are beginning to emerge.
Ontario consumers now have a wider variety of products to choose from, but industry experts say the regulations for this new frontier still need work, as many new bottle shops are operating in a grey area.
Read the full story from the Star's Rosa Saba
8:20 a.m. A local cleanup and evacuation operation has begun in Tonga after an epic volcanic eruption set off a tsunami, as the island nation's government, after days of silence, told of an unprecedented disaster," and the first aerial photos emerged showing the normally green and verdant isles blanketed with gray dust and ash.
International efforts to deliver aid were being hampered Tuesday by an ash cloud over the country's main airport, damaged communication lines and one less obvious long-term threat: the risk of foreigners bringing COVID into a country without the virus.
The communications void three days after the eruption on Saturday night had left the extent of the damage unclear. But in the first official update on Tuesday night, the government in Tonga said it had begun assessing the eruption's toll - confirming that three people had died, including a British national, a 65-year-old woman and a 49-year-old man.
7:47 a.m. Poland's health officials say that the country has entered a new, fifth wave, in the coronavirus pandemic, predicting that it it will peak in mid-February at about 60,000 new infections per day or even more.
Waldemar Kraska, the deputy health minister, said Tuesday that the highly transmissible omicron variant now accounts for 19% of the samples nationwide that have been sequenced, though 50% are in the Pomerania province along the Baltic coast in the country's north.
If the Health Ministry's predictions prove correct, the rate of infection in the coming wave would be more than double that of the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2021.
On Tuesday, Poland recorded 19,652 new cases of COVID-19 and 377 deaths.
Poland's vaccination rate is at 56.5 per cent, significantly lower than in many other European Union nations, and the death rate is significantly higher in proportion to the population.
5:32 a.m.: While the most challenging days of COVID-19 are predicted to be ahead for British Columbia's health-care system, representatives for doctors and nurses say their members are on the verge of a possible collapse.
Doctors of BC president Dr. Ramneek Dosanjh said it has been an overwhelming three years for her members.
I am hearing from some doctors who are just ready to quit," she said in an interview.
The organization represents 16,000 physicians in the province.
People have shared their honest feelings with me and they're feeling so consumed. They're emotionally exhausted. They're feeling depleted," she said.
They're seeing their patients suffer. They're also under such constraints."
5:31 a.m.: From her Spanish-language Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok accounts, Colombian-born nurse Johana Botero makes her pitch to other South American health workers to come join her in Quebec.
Some 10 years after arriving in Canada and well-established in her career, she now tries to help others navigate the long, complicated process that will allow them to practise in Quebec. Their efforts, she assures them, will eventually pay off with better pay, work-life balance and opportunities than they have in their home countries.
It's win-win, both for Quebec and the people who want to immigrate," Botero said in a recent interview.
As the COVID-19 pandemic drags on, the Quebec government needs more nurses, and fast. The pandemic has exacerbated a nursing shortage that continues to grow in urgency as patient numbers rise and tens of thousands of nurses are off the job due to positive COVID-19 tests, other illness and burnout.
To meet the shortage, hospitals and health networks - with the support of the provincial government - are launching recruitment campaigns in Africa, Europe and Latin America. Some are enlisting the help of people like Botero, who is using her Facebook page with 43,000 followers to help a hospital on Montreal's South Shore recruit up to 100 nurses.
But experts and nurses warn that recruiting internationally trained health workers is unlikely to change the situation in the province immediately, despite government efforts to speed things up.
5:30 a.m.: More schools across Ontario are set to reopen for in-person classes Tuesday.
Boards in some parts of the province including Windsor and Thunder Bay saw schools open on Monday after a two-week period of remote learning.
But the plan was set back for students and teachers in other areas of the province, including the Toronto, Hamilton and Ottawa areas, because heavy snow halted school bus services on Monday.
Several boards in the Toronto area, like the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board, the Toronto Catholic District School Board and the York Region District School Board, said classes will go ahead remotely through online learning.
But the Toronto District School Board said there would be no live remote or virtual learning, either, noting in an online post that 36 of its schools still need to have snow removed from their roofs - a task it said couldn't be completed Monday due to poor weather and road conditions.
Class are resuming with limited information about COVID-19 cases in schools.
The province has stopped sharing that case counts because PCR tests for the virus is now limited to those considered most high-risk for an infection, so most teachers and students can't access them.
Teachers' unions have warned families to brace for disruptions from anticipated staff shortages caused by the highly infectious Omicron variant.
Tuesday 5:27 a.m.: There's hope that Health Canada's approval of Pfizer's antiviral COVID-19 treatment will help ease the strain on the country's health-care system, as hospitalizations continue their steady climb.
The pill uses a combination of two antiviral drugs to prevent the virus that causes COVID-19 from replicating once it has infected a patient, but health officials stress it is not a replacement for vaccinations.
Clinical trials showed treatment with Paxlovid reduced the risk of hospitalization and death caused by COVID-19 by 89 per cent when the medications were started within three days of the beginning of symptoms, and by 85 per cent when started within five days.
Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada's chief medical officer, noted supply of Paxlovid will be an early issue, meaning the treatment is unlikely to have much of an impact on the current Omicron wave.
Federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said Canada has already received its first shipment of 30,000 treatment courses of the Pfizer drug, with another 120,000 expected through March.