Today’s coronavirus news: Details for latest lockdown in Ontario emerge; Ontario reports 2,903 new cases, 41 deaths, including 15 in LTC; Elliott reports 8 more cases of new U.K. variant
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.
10:35 a.m. (more details to come): Ontario is returning to many restrictions not seen since the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic last March to reduce the spread of the virus that continues surging to record levels and threatens to overwhelm hospitals.
One key change will see workers deemed non-essential to in-person operations at their places of employment be required to work from home or face fines, sources told the Star. Limits for outdoor gatherings are being lowered with increased enforcement to catch violators.
Premier Doug Ford will announce the measures, including shorter hours for retails like Walmart and Costco selling more than essential grocery and pharmacy items along with a return to a state of emergency, Tuesday afternoon.
10:15 a.m.: Ontario Health Minister Christine Elliott reports that there are eight more cases of the new U.K. variant among the 2,903 new infections.
Meanwhile, locally, there are 837 new COVID-19 cases in Toronto, 545 in Peel, 249 in York Region and 246 in Niagara.
10 a.m.: Ontario is reporting another 2,903 COVID-19 cases Tuesday, with 41 more deaths.
The seven-day average is down slightly to 3,523 cases daily, or 169 weekly per 100,000, the Star's Ed Tubb reports.
The average for deaths is 46.1 per day.
The labs completed 44,802 tests, with 7.8 per cent positivity.
9:55 a.m.: Ontario is reporting 15 more deaths in long-term care homes for a total of 2,995 overall.
There are three less active outbreaks in LTC homes than the previous day, for a total of 249.
8:42 a.m. Two Pickering councillors are defending their decision to travel outside of the country even though Ontario is under lockdown to stop the spread of COVID-19 and the federal government is warning people against non-essential travel.
Ward 2 regional councillor Bill McLean confirmed in a phone interview that he and his wife left Canada on Dec. 28 in order to inspect renovations at the condominium they purchased in Costa Rica last January, and they are still there.
A second councillor, Ward 1 regional councillor Kevin Ashe, also revealed he travelled to the Bahamas to honour his stepson who died in 2018.
McLean said he is not on vacation, but it's necessary that he is at his condo to sign off on extensive work that's been done, and to pay the contractor.
McLean said he booked this trip in November, prior to lockdown, and after cancelling a previously scheduled trip.
8:34 a.m.: Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie is calling on senior levels of government to do more to bolster local long-term-care homes, but said she's not calling for military assistance just yet.
Crombie made the call at a recent press conference, hours after the news of Maureen Ambersely's death, a nurse working at Extendicare nursing home in Mississauga, who died Jan. 5 after testing positive for COVID-19.
We were assured by the province that an iron ring would be put around out LTCs to protect our residents, but we know that hasn't been enough," Crombie said. Frankly I'm frustrated, and we need more to be done to protect those that are the most vulnerable in our communities."
There have been over 2,324 COVID-19 cases among residents and staff in LTC homes across Brampton, Caledon and Mississauga, according to numbers from Peel Health.
As of Jan. 10, the health authority had reported 327 residents and two long-term-care staff deaths related to the virus.
8:10 a.m. The Trump administration is asking states to speed delivery of COVID-19 vaccines to people 65 and older and to others at high risk by no longer holding back the second dose of the two-dose shots, officials said Tuesday.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said that the administration in the states has been too narrowly focused."
As a result, he said, the Trump administration is now asking states to vaccinate people age 65 and over and those under 65 with underlying health conditions. He said the vaccine production is such that the second dose of the two-shot vaccine can be released without jeopardizing immunization for those who got the first shot.
We now believe that our manufacturing is predictable enough that we can ensure second doses are available for people from ongoing production, Azar told ABC's Good Morning America." So everything is now available to our states and our health care providers."
The Trump administration also is pushing to expand the number of places where people can be vaccinated by adding community health centres and additional drug stores.
8 a.m.: Wondering when it will be your turn to receive the COVID-19 vaccine?
Jasmine Mah, a University of Guelph graduate, and Steven Wooding, a U.K. physicist, paired up and created an online tool that projects a date range for when a Canadian could expect to receive their double dose.
The estimated timeline is based on factors such as your age, or whether you work in health care or with seniors in long-term care or live in an Indigenous community, all groups prioritized for Stage One of the federal rollout.
Mah said she created the calculator after hearing people talk about the pandemic being over because of the availability of vaccines.
Read the full story from the Star's Patty Winsa
7:45 a.m. Dr. Tom Stewart will get a payout as high as $1.1 million after losing his job as CEO of St. Joseph's Health System over a Caribbean vacation.
For the staff and the community it feels like a slap in the face," said Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition.
Stewart took a family trip to his private home in the Dominican Republic while on vacation from Dec. 18 to Jan. 5. On Jan. 7, he lost the job of leading the massive health system that includes hospitals, long-term care homes and home care in Hamilton, Niagara, Kitchener, Guelph and Brantford.
St. Joseph's and Stewart parted ways on a without-cause basis," board chair Sister Anne Anderson said in a statement Monday evening. His requested vacation was board approved. All terms of Dr. Stewart's contract will be upheld."
7:40 a.m. The city's first COVID-19 vaccination clinic will open at the downtown Metro Toronto Convention Centre on Jan. 18, Mayor John Tory announced Monday.
Opening three months ahead of schedule, the clinic will administer vaccinations to 250 front-line health-care workers a day, including those who work in shelters, and public health workers who will in turn administer the vaccine to others.
In response to a request from the province, the city will be opening a large COVID-19 immunization clinic next Monday, quite a few weeks earlier than originally planned," said Tory, speaking at a COVID-19 update from city hall.
Read the full story from the Star's Francine Kopun and Celina Gallardo
7:35 a.m. Ontario's long-term-care homes continue be in crisis as the number of positive COVID-19 cases and deaths related to the virus continue to climb. The provincial government is under immense pressure to improve the situation and ensure the health and safety of residents, health-care workers and staff members.
But what can ordinary people do to help make a difference in improving the situation in long-term-care facilities? We compiled a list of five ideas.
7:26 a.m. The number of doses of COVID-19 vaccines given out in Ontario took a steep drop over the weekend, even as new cases and deaths - especially in long-term-care homes - continue to rise.
On Saturday, the province gave 9,983 shots of the new vaccines, down from 15,700 on Friday, a drop of more than 5,700, according to provincial data. The trend continued on Sunday when just 8,859 doses were administered.
I would see that as a fail," said Colin Furness, an infection control epidemiologist at the University of Toronto. We need 100,000 jabs a day (in Ontario) to get herd immunity by the end of the summer, which is what the federal government promised. That's conservative. Every day we don't do that, we're actually driving that number higher to make up for it. That's a really serious issue."
Read the full story from the Star's Kenyon Wallace
7:10 a.m. The start of the Formula One season was delayed by one week on Tuesday after the Australian Grand Prix was postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
With the race in Melbourne moved from March to November, the season will now start in Bahrain on March 28.
The Australian race, initially set to open the season on March 21, has been rescheduled to Nov. 21 with F1 organizers citing the ongoing situation regarding COVID-19." The Chinese Grand Prix has also been postponed but no new date has been set. Strict travel restrictions for the pandemic make Australia and China among the hardest countries for F1 teams to enter.
The season will instead start with the Bahrain Grand Prix less than four months after the Sakhir venue held two races as part of the 2020 season.
A race has been added at the Imola track in Italy on April 18, a week after the scheduled date for the Chinese GP. There is a vacant slot on May 2, with the Portimao circuit in Portugal among the leading candidates for that weekend.
Discussions with the promoter and authorities in China are ongoing with the potential to reschedule the race later in the season if possible." F1 said in a statement.
6:38 a.m. The Ontario government is expected to announce new COVID-19 measures Tuesday as well as updated projections for the pandemic's progression over the next several weeks.
Premier Doug Ford and his cabinet met last night to consider new restrictions amid skyrocketing infection rates.
The premier hasn't indicated what the new rules could be, but he has previously suggested the current provincial lockdown may need to be extended past its original end date of Jan. 23.
Ontario's associate medical officer of health, Dr. Barbara Yaffe, said Monday the recommendations before cabinet did not include imposing a curfew, as has been done in Quebec.
The province's most recent pandemic projections, made public late last month, showed that if COVID-19 case rates continued to grow between one and three per cent, the province would have 3,000 to 5,000 daily cases by the end of January.
Ontario has reported more than 3,000 cases daily for the last week, with 3,338 new cases reported Monday as well as 29 new deaths.
6:31 a.m. The small Pacific nation of Micronesia has reported its first case of the coronavirus after a crewmember on an arriving ship tested positive. In an address to the nation, President David Panuelo said many people had heard the alarming news" but the case has been contained at the border.
Panuelo said one crew member aboard the government ship Chief Mailo had tested positive after the ship had returned from the Philippines following more than a year of drydock repairs. He said the crew member has been isolated on board, that all other crew remain on board, and that the ship is being monitored daily by law enforcement. Micronesia, home to 100,000 people, had been among just a few nations to have avoided the virus altogether.
5:10 a.m. The caskets are stacked three high in the Meissen crematorium's sombre memorial hall, piled up in empty offices and stored in hallways. Many are sealed with plastic wrapping, others are labeled infection risk," urgent" or simply COVID."
A surge of coronavirus deaths in this corner of eastern Germany has boosted business for crematorium manager Joerg Schaldach and his staff, but nobody is celebrating.
The situation is a little bit tense for us at the moment," Schaldach said as another undertaker's van pulled up outside.
The crematorium would typically have 70 to 100 caskets on site at this time of year, when the flu season takes its toll on the elderly.
It's normal for more people to die in winter than in summer," said Schaldach. That's always been the case."
Now he has 300 bodies waiting to be cremated and each day dozens more are delivered to the modernist building on a hill overlooking Meissen, an ancient town better known for its delicate porcelain and impressive Gothic castle.
5:04 a.m. The office of the Portuguese president says that Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa tested positive for coronavirus although the veteran politician has no symptoms.
Rebelo de Sousa, who took office in 2016 and is 72, is seeking a second term in the country's presidential election on Jan. 24.
A laboratory test with the so-called PCR technique late on Monday revealed that the president was positive for the virus, despite an antigen test having come out negative earlier in the day, his office said in a statement.
The president is self-isolating in a residential area in Belem, in the west of central Lisbon and has suspended all his agenda for coming days, it said.
4:57 a.m. China says World Health Organization experts will begin their fact-finding visit this week in the central city of Wuhan where the coronavirus was first detected in late 2019.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said Tuesday that the experts would fly from Singapore to Wuhan on Thursday. Other details of their schedule haven't been announced and the central government's National Health Commission offered no further information.
The visit has been expected for months and WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus last week expressed frustration that arrangements were taking so long to finalize. After China announced the visit Monday, Tedros said the scientists, who hail from several nations, would be focusing on how COVID-19 first jumped to people.
An Associated Press investigation recently found that China has been strictly controlling all research into the origins of the coronavirus, and the WHO team will have its agenda and any visits within China approved by the Chinese government. China has dismissed calls for an independent investigation, while promoting fringe theories that the virus may have actually been brought to China from outside.
4:54 a.m. New Zealand will soon require that travellers from most countries show negative coronavirus tests before they leave for New Zealand.
COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins says New Zealand is in a fortunate position to have stamped out community spread of the virus but takes nothing for granted.
The new rules will require travellers to have a negative test within 72 hours of departure. The rules will be imposed on travellers from the U.S. and the U.K. from Friday and most other countries soon after. Travellers from Australia and some Pacific nations will be exempted.
Tuesday 4 a.m. India has started shipping COVID-19 vaccines to multiple cities, four days ahead of the nationwide inoculation drive.
The first consignment of vaccines developed by the Serum Institute of India left the Indian city of Pune on Tuesday. The vaccines rolled out from Serum Institute of India's facility in temperature-controlled trucks to the city's airport from where they were loaded into private air carriers for distribution all over the country.
Civil aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri called the shipping of vaccines a momentous mission."
Beginning Saturday, India will start the massive undertaking of inoculating an estimated 30 million doctors, nurses and other front-line workers. The effort will then turn to inoculating around 270 million people who are either older than 50 or have secondary health conditions that raise their risks of dying from COVID-19.
The first vaccine shipments contain the COVISHIELD vaccine made by the Serum Institute and developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca.
Monday 7:35 p.m.: Skate Canada announced on Monday that the 2021 National Skating Championships and Skate Canada Cup have been cancelled.
Skate Canada says the two events are being cancelled because of the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic across Canada."
The Canadian championships - also the trial competition for the world championships which are scheduled for March in Stockholm - were scheduled to run from Feb. 8-14 in Vancouver.
The second wave of COVID-19 forced Skate Canada to hold the Skate Canada Challenge virtually this past weekend. Skaters performed their programs at their home rinks over the past few weeks, then submitted videos, which were broadcast and judged in real time in an effort to simulate a live competition.
The virtual Challenge, held after an almost yearlong layoff from competition for Canadian skaters, was a qualifying event for the upcoming Canadian championships.