Today’s coronavirus news: B.C. hospitals could soon be overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients; Washington State imposes strictest U.S. school mandate, requiring all staff to be vaccinated
The latest coronavirus news from Canada and around the world Thursday. This file will be updated throughout the day. Web links to longer stories if available.
10:05 a.m. The Palm Beach County School District joined Broward and Miami-Dade in defying Gov. Ron DeSantis' ban against mask mandates.
School board members, after hours Wednesday of heated public comments from residents vehemently opposed to a mask mandate, voted 6-1 to require all students and staff wear masks on school grounds starting Monday.
The mandate will be in place for 90 days, and the policy will allow for some medical exemptions. The school district previously allowed students to opt out if their parent signed a note.
With new COVID cases continuing to break records, the delta variant spreading more rapidly than previous strains of the virus and younger people getting sick, school board members decided they couldn't hold back on a mandate any longer.
As of Wednesday, there were 846 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Palm Beach County schools, with 734 students and 112 employees. More than 1,700 students had been told to stay home as of Wednesday, Interim Superintendent Michael Burke said at the meeting. The school year started Aug. 10.
Board member Karen Brill said the board needed to make the decision to require masks in light of the fact that the vast majority of students in the county have opted to wear masks. Only about 5% to 6% of students in the district have opted to go without masks, Brill said.
As of Friday, at least 8,518 students out of the 179,000 in the district opted not to wear masks, the district told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
9:17 a.m. 4,481,754 vaccine doses have been administered to date in the City of Toronto, according to a tweet from Mayor John Tory.
9 a.m. The number of people seeking unemployment benefits in the U.S. fell last week for a fourth straight time to a pandemic low, the latest sign that America's job market is rebounding from the pandemic recession as employers boost hiring to meet a surge in consumer demand.
The Labor Department reported Thursday that jobless claims fell by 29,000 to 348,000.
The weekly pace of applications for unemployment aid has fallen more or less steadily since topping 900,000 in early January. The dwindling number of first-time jobless claims has coincided with the widespread administering of vaccines, which has led businesses to reopen or expand their hours and drawn consumers back to shops, restaurants, airports and entertainment venues.
Still, the number of applications remains high by historic standards: Before the pandemic tore through the economy in March 2020, the weekly pace amounted to around 220,000 a week. And now there is growing concern that the highly contagious delta variant could disrupt the economy's recovery from last year's brief but intense recession. Some economists have already begun to mark down their estimates for growth this quarter as some measures of economic activity, like air travel, have started to weaken.
8:45 a.m. Nineteen months into the global COVID-19 pandemic, Emily Silva was looking forward to seeing her parents again.
After she invited them to her home in Woodstock, N.B., Silva's parents hunted around to find a way to get there from their home in Blind River, a small town in northern B.C.'s interior.
Eventually, they were excited to find a lengthy but affordable route starting at the airport in Prince George, a three-hour drive away.
When they showed up at the airport on July 30, they were shocked to learn the first leg of their journey, a WestJet flight to Vancouver, had been cancelled because of a crew shortage.
Read the full story from the Star's Josh Rubin
8:30 a.m. Australia has suffered its worst day since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, with total daily cases surpassing the previous record posted more than a year ago as a Delta variant outbreak spreads as far as New Zealand.
New South Wales recorded 681 new cases, Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters on Thursday in Sydney, where stay-at-home orders have been enforced for almost two months. Meanwhile, Victoria state recorded 57 new infections - more than double from the previous day, and its highest tally since September - as Melbourne endures its sixth lockdown since the pandemic began.
The number of cases in Australia's two-most populous states surpasses the nation's previous high, recorded in early August 2020, when Melbourne was in the midst of a lockdown that lasted for three months.
Authorities are now finding that lockdown strategies that had previously worked to eliminate community transmissions are struggling to contain the spread of the highly contagious strain, especially as people grow increasingly weary of the stay-home restrictions.
8 a.m. The Toronto District School Board is taking a more cautious approach toward reopening in the fall than what the province's guidelines allow, placing firmer limits on student socializing and other gatherings like group singing.
At a special meeting Tuesday evening, the TDSB released its safety and health measures for a safe return to classrooms. The province's guidelines for schools reopening allow for in-person gatherings and for students mingling outside their cohorts during recess or breaks outdoors, but in several ways the Toronto board will be following more stringent procedures than recommended by Ontario's Ministry of Education.
Still, with around three weeks until the term starts in Toronto, protocols around health and physical education, extracurriculars, community use of schools, lunch procedures for secondary students and the use of musical instruments are yet to be outlined.
Read the full story from the Star's Maria Sarrouh
7:45 a.m. COVID-19 infections in health-care workers across Canada are approaching the 100,000 mark, with close to 30,000 cases recorded between January and June of this year, according to new data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI).
As of June 15, cases in Canadian health-care workers stood at 94,873, up from 65,920 on Jan. 15, the national non-profit organization said Thursday, representing an almost 44 per cent increase. At the same time, while overall infections in health-care workers have risen, the share of those cases out of all cases in Canada has fallen to about seven per cent, down from about 10 per cent in January.
Forty-three health-care workers have died of COVID since the beginning of the pandemic, CIHI reported.
Read the full story from the Star's Kenyon Wallace
5:50 a.m.: The Manitoulin Island Health Centre said in a release that it is preparing for a surge in COVID-19 cases.
This includes moving patients from one facility to another to co-ordinate COVID and non-COVID sites.
If there is a surge of COVID positive patients, further activation of the surge plan includes designating the Little Current site as the COVID-19 site," the release said.
Under the surge plan, most non-COVID patients will be transferred to the Mindemoya site."
The MHC is moving into its surge preparedness plan following an announcement that the health unit said there are 17 active cases on Manitoulin Island.
This is not meant to scare or alarm you, but it is meant to remind you to continue to be diligent," said the release.
We must continue to wash our hands, wear our masks, maintain social distancing when required and if not vaccinated, we encourage you to do so."
The MHC also said that The Delta variant is circulating in the community, and even if you are double vaccinated, you can still contract and transmit the virus.
5:49 a.m.: Hospitals across B.C. could soon be overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients unless tougher public health measures are taken to quell the pandemic's fourth wave, an independent modelling group warned today.
B.C. currently has the highest per-capita infection rate in Canada and is on track to see 90 per cent of ICU beds filled with COVID-19 patients, the BC COVID-19 Modelling Group said in a report.
It is urgent that action be taken to reduce transmission and expand vaccination coverage in order to avoid overwhelming B.C.'s medical system," says the report from experts in infectious diseases and modelling from around B.C.
Overwhelmed hospitals not only impact patients sick with COVID-19 but could mean those in need of emergency care for heart attacks, car accidents and other life-threatening conditions can't be cared for properly or at all.
The new models project B.C. could see more than 1,000 new cases a day by the end of the month, more than double the current rate. Delta variant cases - 95 per cent of current infections - are doubling every nine days, the report said.
B.C. public health officials have maintained that rising case rates are not likely to lead to increased hospitalizations because vaccines reduce the severity of COVID-19.
But 17.3 per cent of eligible people remain unvaccinated. They make up more than three-quarters of cases in the province and the overwhelming majority of those hospitalized, according to B.C.'s most recent data last month.
5:47 a.m.: Tourists and servers alike dance atop tables and in the aisles at one restaurant on the Redneck Riviera," a beloved stretch of towns along the northern Gulf Coast where beaches, bars and stores are packed. Yet just a few miles away, a hospital is running out of critical care beds, its rooms full of unvaccinated people fighting for their lives.
On maps that show virus hot spots" in red, this part of the U.S. coast is glowing like a bad sunburn. And a summer of booming tourism that followed the lockdowns and travel restrictions of 2020 is making the turn toward fall with only a few signs of slowing down.
Health officials believe the spike is due to a combination of some of the nation's lowest vaccination rates, unabated tourism, a disregard for basic health precautions and the region's carefree lifestyle, all combining at a time when the mutated virus is more contagious than ever and conservative states are balking at new health restrictions.
On a recent afternoon, one shopper after another walked through the mouth of a giant, fake shark into a Gulf Shores souvenir shop. Minigolf courses, bars, go-kart tracks, hotels and condominium towers were full. The National Shrimp Festival, which draws as many as 250,000 people to the Alabama coast, is set for October despite the COVID-19 explosion.
5:46 a.m.: All teachers and school personnel in Washington state - including coaches, bus drivers and volunteers - will need to be fully vaccinated as a condition of employment, under a new policy announced by Gov. Jay Inslee on Wednesday. The requirement applies to staff regardless of the type of school in which they work: public, charter or private.
The policy is the strictest vaccine mandate imposed to date by any state for teachers and other staff members in schools, allowing for only a few exceptions. School staff must be vaccinated by Oct. 18 or face possible dismissal.
We are well past the point where testing is enough to keep people safe," Inslee said at a news conference. We've tried it. It has not been adequate for the task at hand."
He stressed that 95% of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in Washington were unvaccinated, and reminded the public that children under 12 are not yet eligible for vaccines.
When you decide to get a vaccine, you're protecting a kid out there who can't get it," he said.
Thursday 5:45 a.m.: What is being done to distribute COVID-19 vaccines globally?
Several groups are working to get shots to poor countries, but they're falling far short of what's needed to curb outbreaks around the world.
Among the efforts is COVAX, which relies on donations from rich countries and private funders. The group has missed its own distribution targets largely because it didn't have the resources to secure vaccine supplies early on in the pandemic.
As of mid-August, COVAX has distributed about 207 million doses to 138 countries and territories. That's compared with more than 417 million doses distributed in just the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
COVAX was created last year to try and ensure vaccines are distributed fairly and is led by public health agencies including the World Health Organization. Without enough purchased vaccines, COVAX is now relying on donated shots from wealthy countries, but most of the pledged doses won't be delivered this year.
Logistics are another problem. To get vaccines from COVAX, countries have to show how they'll distribute the shots and prioritize high-risk people like health workers and the elderly. But some countries that are in desperate need of vaccines haven't been able to show they can carry out such plans and lack the funds to carry out immunization campaigns.
Other groups have been stepping in to help. In July, the African Union said it bought 400 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson shot for 45 African countries. China, Russia and the U.S. have donated millions of vaccines to countries. And in June, the leading industrial nations known as the Group of Seven said they would donate 1 billion doses to poor countries. The G-7 countries are Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States.
Still, that's far short of the 11 billion doses WHO says are needed to stop the pandemic.
To protect people at high risk for severe illness in poor countries, WHO has urged rich countries to immediately donate more doses and to stop plans for immunizing children and giving booster doses.
We are making conscious choices right now not to protect those in need," said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.