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.
There’s a very bright spot inside the Castleview-Wychwood long-term-care home run by the city near Dupont and Christie Streets north of the city’s core.
For the first time, some Toronto-area hospitals are being forced to transfer pediatric in-patients to the Hospital for Sick Children to make room for an unprecedented surge of adults needing treatment for COVID-19. It’s yet another sign that the escalating numbers of critically ill patients with the virus are putting extreme pressures on hospitals already struggling to cope.
If you squint, it looks like a normal afternoon in one of the sunshine centres of the world, as people stroll Miami Beach beneath a brilliant blue sky.
Ontario’s chief medical officer says daily cases of COVID-19 could soon top 4,000 after setting twin records of 3,519 new infections with 89 deaths, and warned of “crushing” numbers if the dramatically more contagious U.K. variant of the virus gains a foothold here.
This year has kicked off with a number of politicians of all stripes across the country landing in hot water for ignoring travel restrictions imposed during the pandemic. As it turns out, many Canadians are not blameless either.
There go the schools, and maybe it’s ironic. This is, after all, the province that refuses to learn anything as the pandemic spreads, and the way it’s failing the test has been predictable as a result. On Thursday neither the premier nor the education minister bothered to be the ones to say that Ontario schools will stay virtual through Jan. 25, save for the seven northern health units that have yet to be overrun. For parents, it’s a last-minute blow. A lot of people are scrambling again.
Ontario Health officials expected to provide recommendation on return to class.Speaking briefly with reporters after touring a hospital facility in Toronto, Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, discusses the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines in the province. The premier also faces questions about the timeline for students' return to in-class school instruction in light of an ongoing increase in the number of COVID-19 cases among children.