Today’s coronavirus news: Ontario reporting 2,362 COVID-19 cases; CNE, Taste of the Danforth cancelled again; Petition wants Tokyo Games cancelled
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.
10:20 a.m. 1,610,514 vaccine doses have been administered in Toronto as of May 14.
10:15 a.m. (will be updated) Ontario is reporting 2,362 COVID-19 cases and 26 deaths. Locally, there are 691 new cases in Toronto, 563 in Peel, 224 in York Region, 148 in Durham and 112 in Hamilton; over 44,000 tests completed.
The seven-day average is down to 2,616 cases per day or 131 weekly per 100,000, and up to 27.9 deaths per day. Labs are reporting 44,040 completed tests and a 6.1 per cent positive, according to the Star's Ed Tubb.
9:30 a.m. Greyhound Canada is permanently shuttering its operations across the country after years of declining ridership and cuts to service.
The flagship motor-coach company, founded nearly a century ago to connect rural communities with urban centres across North America, announced on Thursday it will close its remaining Canadian routes, in Ontario and Quebec.
Our service is reliant on the farebox - we are not able to sustain operations with a significant reduction in ridership and the corresponding revenue loss," the company said in a news release.
The decision will result in more than 400 lost jobs, according to the bus drivers' union, and it deals a blow to rural and remote areas that rely on a patchwork of private bus companies for mobility.
Read the full story from the Star's Breanna Xavier-Carter and Jacob Lorinc
9:15 a.m. Carlo Escario reported to the border agency's office at Pearson airport at 7:30 a.m. on Thursday for the flight that was to remove him from Canada.
He asked the border officials to let him wait outside the office so he could be with his two cousins until his boarding at 9:30 a.m., while his deportation papers to the Philippines were finalized.
All the while, the front-line essential health-care worker was checking his email and social media, praying for a last-minute reprieve.
Over the past 24 hours, his supporters had organized an online petition that garnered more than 8,200 signatures and lobbied federal politicians to defer his removal until June, so he could get his second dose of Pfizer vaccine before he's sent back to his homeland.
His former colleagues at Toronto General Hospital had also scrambled to try unsuccessfully to find him a spare dose that he could have before his departure to the Philippines, which is now fighting a second wave of COVID-19 and struggling to secure vaccines for its people.
Then at 8:39 a.m., his cellphone rang.
Read the full story from the Star's Nicholas Keung
8:45 a.m. An online petition with more than 350,000 signatures calling for the Tokyo Games to be cancelled was submitted Friday to local organizers, the International Olympic Committee and others.
The Olympics are scheduled to open in just 10 weeks on July 23 in the midst of a pandemic with Tokyo and other areas under a state of emergency. Cases continue to rise in Japan, where less than 2 per cent of the population has been fully vaccinated.
The petition campaign - called Stop Tokyo Olympics" - was drafted by well-known lawyer Kenji Utsunomiya, who has also run for governor of Tokyo. He said the response was surprising but acknowledged that this was too little, and probably too late.
I think that the media coverage puts a lot of pressure on the IOC, the International Paralympic Committee, the Japanese government, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and the organizing committee," Utsunomiya said at a news conference. So in that sense, I am glad I did it. However, in terms of the numbers, I think that tens of millions of signatures are really necessary."
Utsunomiya said the Olympics would divert medical services from the general public, which has been a rising concern as hospitals come under strains that could get worse as the games approach.
Organizers and the IOC say they will hold the games safely, isolating 15,400 Olympic and Paralympic athletes in a bubble" and repeatedly testing them and the tens of thousands of others - judges, staff, sponsors, media and broadcasters - who will enter a country that has had its borders sealed for a year.
Japan has attributed about 11,000 deaths to COVID-19, good by world standards but poor in Asia where places like Taiwan and South Korea have been more successful.
There in no indication the Olympics will be cancelled with billions of dollars riding on it, although there has been opposition from the local medical community. Last month, the British Medical Journal suggested the games be reconsidered."
The IOC relies on selling broadcast rights for almost 75 per cent of its income - 18 per cent more is from sponsors - and Japan has officially spent $15.4 billion to organize the Olympics. A government audit has suggested the number might be twice that large.
8 a.m. Students will have to stick with online learning for the time being," Premier Doug Ford said Thursday after extending the province's stay-at-home order into next month.
And while some pediatric experts are urging a possible return to in-person classes in June in areas with low COVID-19 rates, Ford accused teacher unions of potentially putting an injunction against opening the schools."
The school situation remains a critical concern for many parents," Ford said. On the one hand, we have some doctors saying they want to open the schools. On the other hand, we have the teachers' unions saying we can't do that right now. We need public health doctors, teachers and labour partners to agree on the best path forward when we also need consensus. And we simply don't have that right now."
So, he added, for the time being, we will need to continue with virtual learning. We will take this time to vaccinate as many teachers and students as possible" now that kids aged 12 to 17 will be eligible for a shot starting May 31.
Read the full story from the Star's Kristin Rushowy
7:50 a.m. A father figure to many and community leader with the Toronto Kiki Ballroom Alliance, 37-year-old Keon Danger' Providence suddenly passed away on Monday, due to a stroke.
Danger founded the House of Constantine in Toronto's ballroom community, as a place BIPOC LGBTQ+ people could call home.
Originally from St. Vincent and the Grenadines in the Caribbean, Danger immigrated to Canada with his family in 2006.
Anyone who met Keon would never be the same, I can tell you that," Danger's mother Patrice Providence told the Star.
Keon was there for his community as a mentor, and they all just loved him," she added.
Read the full story from the Star's Akrit Michael and Breanna Xavier-Carter
7:40 a.m. In the hours between the sun rising on the eastern seaboard and setting on the western coast today, Canada will have administered more COVID-19 vaccine shots relative to its population than the United States.
It is a milestone first hit late last week, as the vaccination program in this country speeds up and the one south of the border slows.
Last Tuesday, both countries gave vaccine doses, either first or second, to about two thirds of a per cent of their populations in a single day - a brief moment of synchronicity before the neighbours seemed to set off in different directions.
There's no question that the U.S. vaccine rollout has been quicker out of the gate. At its peak last month, the U.S. was managing to give a vaccine dose to a full percentage point of its population every day. But the pace of its rollout has fallen steadily. Meanwhile, Canadian numbers have trended upwards, bolstered by some of the biggest shipments of vaccine since doses were authorized late last year.
Read the full story from the Star's Alex Boyd
7:20 a.m. On a Saturday morning in late December, Sandy Bassett sat in her office at the Wexford Residence long-term-care home, staring at a long list of names.
Over two days, Bassett would call every person on the list, her entire staff of more than 180 people, and ask the same question: Are you willing to be vaccinated?
The Wexford is a not-for-profit nursing home on a busy commercial strip in a COVID-19 hot spot in Scarborough. Bassett, the CEO and executive director, had learned a week earlier that the home would be among the first in Ontario to be offered vaccinations. A team from nearby Michael Garron Hospital would send buses to shuttle staff to their clinic for the first dose.
Vaccines were the way out of the nightmare long-term-care homes had been facing since the pandemic's first wave - an end to mass outbreaks that, in some homes, had wiped out dozens of residents. But long-term-care operators across the province would face a challenge that threatened the goal of protecting vulnerable seniors: staff were not initially signing up in large numbers. It was up to people like Bassett and her team to address the hesitancy. But how?
Read the full story from the Star's Amy Dempsey
7:10 a.m. If Greg Louth, the owner of Lake St. George Golf Club, had kept the television on any longer Thursday afternoon, he would have thrown an axe through it.
Louth, whose family has owned the course north of Orillia, Ont., since 1979, was watching Premier Doug Ford extend the province's stay-at-home order until June 2 with a mix of anger and frustration. Once Ford began talking about his buddies," that's when Louth turned it off.
What an absolutely ignorant, stupid statement," Louth said. I'm still sitting here stunned."
Ford addressed golf specifically Thursday as he reiterated the government's position on trying to limit mobility. And he alluded to friends who were being cavalier with golf's existing COVID-19 protocols as a reason why he is keeping courses closed, despite 26 million rounds being played in Ontario in 2020 with no known cases of COVID-19 traced back to a golf facility.
7 a.m. The U.K. official leading preparations for the COP26 climate conference reiterated Thursday the intention to hold the delayed summit in person despite the continuing problems caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Alok Sharma, the U.K.'s president-designate of COP26, said every possible" measure was being explored, including around COVID-19 testing and vaccinations, to ensure the talks could be held safely.
In less than six months' time delegates from across the world are due to arrive in Glasgow for the United Nations' annual conference.
The summit was originally set for November 2020, but the pandemic forced it to be postponed for a year. A year on, there are still issues, and limits on international travel remain in place.
For me it is vital that developing countries are able to sit at the same table, face-to-face with the larger countries, the big emitters," Sharma said. The desire for (an in-person summit) is what I've been hearing loud and clear from governments and communities around the world."
Sharma said the world had not done nearly enough" to act on the commitments of the Paris climate accord, which was first agreed at COP21 in 2016.
The treaty seeks to limit global temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with pre-industrial times.
The president-designate said COP26 was the last hope" to keep that commitment.
6:39 a.m.: The Canadian National Exhibition, Taste of the Danforth and other crowd-drawing Toronto events are being cancelled for a second straight summer due to COVID-19 risk, the Star has learned.
The city is announcing Friday that no permits will be issued for events on public property until after Labour Day, Sept. 6. The timing preserves the possibility of in-person events at the Sept. 9-18 Toronto International Film Festival.
But no big gatherings can happen at the Honda Indy Toronto and Beaches Jazz Festival in July or, in August, the CNE and Taste of the Danforth. Pride had already cancelled its June events and parade.
Read the full story from the Star's David Rider here.
6:35 a.m.: Vaccines were the way out of the nightmare long-term-care homes had been facing since the pandemic's first wave - an end to mass outbreaks that, in some homes, had wiped out dozens of residents.
But long-term-care operators across the province would face a challenge that threatened the goal of protecting vulnerable seniors: staff were not initially signing up in large numbers. It was usually up to management to address the hesitancy. But how?
Read the full story from the Star's Amy Dempsey here.
6:34 a.m.: When London's Science Museum reopens next week, it will have some new artifacts: empty vaccine vials, testing kits and other items collected during the pandemic, to be featured in a new COVID-19 display.
Britain isn't quite ready to consign the coronavirus to a museum - the outbreak is far from over here. But there is a definite feeling that the U.K. has turned a corner, and the mood in the country is jubilant. The end is in sight," one newspaper front page claimed recently. Free at last!" read another.
Thanks to an efficient vaccine rollout program, Britain is finally saying goodbye to months of tough lockdown restrictions.
Starting Monday, all restaurants and bars in England can reopen with some precautions in place, as can hotels, theatres and museums. And Britons will be able to hug friends and family again, with the easing of social distancing rules that have been in place since the pandemic began.
It's the biggest step yet to reopen the country following an easing of the crisis blamed for nearly 128,000 deaths, the highest reported COVID-19 toll in Europe.
Deaths in Britain have come down to single digits in recent days. It's a far cry from January, when up to 1,477 deaths a day were recorded amid a brutal second wave driven by a more infectious variant first found in Kent, in southeastern England.
New cases have plummeted to an average of around 2,000 a day, compared with nearly 70,000 a day during the winter.
6:32 a.m.: India's prime minister has warned people to take extra precautions as the country's devastating coronavirus outbreak is spreading fast to rural areas where nearly two-thirds of the country's nearly 1.4 billion people live.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged people living in rural areas, village councils and state governments to come together to meet the challenge. Modi said the army, navy and the Air Force have joined the fight against the pandemic in the country.
We have lost a lot of near ones. I am feeling the pain people are suffering," Modi said in Friday a speech at a farmers' convention.
Meanwhile, India's Health Ministry on Friday reported 343,144 new cases in the past 24 hours, a slight decline from the day before. Another 4,000 people died in the past 24 hours, raising total fatalities to 262,317 since the pandemic began. All of the figures are almost certainly a vast undercount, experts say.
6:32 a.m.: Authorities in Pakistan have reported 48 single-day deaths and about 2,500 new cases, one of the lowest levels of fatalities and infections from COVID-19 in the past two months.
It indicated Pakistan might have witnessed a peak, but experts say it was too early to tell.
Pakistan is currently in the middle of the another surge of coronavirus infections which authorities say is more dangerous as compared to the previous ones.
The National Command and Control Center, which oversees Pakistan's response to COVID-19, has however urged people to continue adhering to social distancing rules.
The latest development comes days about 10 days after Pakistan imposed a two-week long nationwide lockdown ahead of Eil al-Fitr that was celebrated Thursday amid the pandemic. Pakistan has reported 19,384 deaths and 873,220 coronavirus cases since last year.
6:30 a.m.: The World Bank said it has signed an agreement with Sri Lanka to provide $80.5 million to help the island nation's vaccination drive against COVID-19.
The funding comes as Sri Lanka is facing a severe shortage of vaccines because of the current crisis in neighbouring India, which had earlier promised to give the vaccines to Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka began it's vaccination drive on Jan. 29 and in the first round, 925,242 people were vaccinated using Oxford-AstraZeneca shots.
At present, Sri Lanka's health ministry has about 350,000 doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca and as a result, there is a shortage of 600,000 doses in order to complete administering second doses.
Sri Lanka is currently using 600,000 doses of Sinopharm vaccine and 15,000 of Sputnik V to give a first dose to others.
6:25 a.m.: Experts say Ontario will need to leverage clarity and collaboration to reach its goal of fully immunizing all willing adults against COVID-19 by mid-September.
Premier Doug Ford announced his goal of a two-dose summer" yesterday, if supply allows.
A spokeswoman says the province aims to have all willing adults fully immunized against the virus by Sept. 22.
University of Toronto epidemiologist Ashleigh Tuite says the sooner the population can be fully vaccinated, the better.
She says the government should clarify its plan for second doses, given the confusing, piecemeal" vaccination campaign thus far.
The president of the Ontario Medical Association says she is fully on board with the plan to get Ontarians fully vaccinated by September.
Read the full story from the Canadian Press here.
4 a.m.: The latest numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Canada as of 4:00 a.m. ET on Friday, May 14, 2021.
There are 1,312,408 confirmed cases in Canada (75,475 active, 1,212,108 resolved, 24,825 deaths). The total case count includes 13 confirmed cases among repatriated travellers.
There were 6,615 new cases Thursday. The rate of active cases is 198.59 per 100,000 people. Over the past seven days, there have been a total of 47,068 new cases. The seven-day rolling average of new cases is 6,724.
There were 60 new reported deaths Thursday. Over the past seven days there have been a total of 338 new reported deaths. The seven-day rolling average of new reported deaths is 48. The seven-day rolling average of the death rate is 0.13 per 100,000 people. The overall death rate is 65.32 per 100,000 people.
There have been 33,130,218 tests completed.
4 a.m.: The latest numbers on COVID-19 vaccinations in Canada as of 4:00 a.m. ET on Friday, May 14, 2021.
In Canada, the provinces are reporting 334,975 new vaccinations administered for a total of 17,239,587 doses given. Nationwide, 1,331,739 people or 3.5 per cent of the population has been fully vaccinated. The provinces have administered doses at a rate of 45,487.905 per 100,000.
There were 325,980 new vaccines delivered to the provinces and territories for a total of 20,276,264 doses delivered so far. The provinces and territories have used 85.02 per cent of their available vaccine supply.