The latest coronavirus news from Canada and around the world Saturday. This file will be updated throughout the day. Web links to longer stories if available.
1 p.m. Coronavirus infections continue to spread at record levels in the United States, reaching a new daily high of nearly 228,000 cases on Friday.
The 227,885 cases eclipses the previous high of more than 217,000 on Thursday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
The seven-day rolling average of COVID-19 attributable deaths in the U.S. has passed 2,000 for the first time since the spring. It reached 2,011 on Friday. Two weeks ago, the seven-day average was 1,448. There were 2,607 deaths reported in the U.S. on Friday.
Globally, Johns Hopkins reports more than 1.5 million people have died from the coronavirus pandemic, including more than 279,000 in the United States.
11:50 a.m. Health officials in New Brunswick are reporting two new cases of COVID-19 today.
The first case involves a person in their 50s in the Saint John region, and the second case is a person in their 40s in the Edmundston region of northwestern New Brunswick.
There are now 98 active cases in the province, with one patient recovering in an intensive care unit.
The number of confirmed cases in New Brunswick is 530, which includes seven deaths and 425 recoveries.
10:31 a.m. On Saturday, Ontario reported a new record high of 1,859 cases of COVID-19 with about 59,400 tests completed, along with 20 new deaths linked to the virus. The new cases reported include 504 in Toronto, 463 in Peel and 198 in York Region.
There are 1,624 more resolved cases, while the number of active cases sits at 15,212.
The number of patients in the province’s hospitals stands at 709, with 202 in intensive care.
Elliott says the province has “reached a critical point” in the spread of the virus and is once again urging residents to wear masks and follow public health advice.
9:30 a.m. India has registered 36,652 confirmed coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours.
India’s health ministry on Saturday also recorded 512 deaths in the past 24 hours, taking total deaths to nearly 140,000. The pace of new cases has seen a downward trend, with single-day cases remaining below the 50,000 mark a month.
India has 9.6 million total cases, second behind the U.S. with 14.3 million. But globally it has one of the lowest deaths per million population, according to the Health Ministry.
8 a.m. Millions of students across the province are in the midst of a school year like no other. COVID-19 forced the sudden shutdown of schools after March Break, and when classes resumed weeks later, everyone was forced to pivot to online with little preparation and no training. It wasn’t pretty.
The start of the school year in September wasn’t much better. With no direction from the Ministry of Education until late summer, boards were left scrambling to make in-person schools safe and build virtual schools from scratch.
The result was chaos. Face-to-face classes were not physically distanced; classrooms lacked proper ventilation; teachers protested a lack of protective gear. Within days, schools were hit with COVID-19 outbreaks; to date, 776 of Ontario’s public schools have had cases, resulting in kids or full classes being sent home. Meanwhile, virtual school, unprepared for the demand, was beset by technology challenges, a delayed start and a seemingly endless shuffling of students and teachers.
Together with the Ontario teachers strikes at the beginning of 2020, these disrupted school days have added up, leaving some to wonder how things are going for the millions of children in the province’s schools: Are our kids even learning? Is this a “lost year?” Who will be left behind when the dust settles?
7:45 a.m. For Empire Co. CEO Michael Medline, the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic were a flurry of meetings as he and his team scrambled to fulfil the grocery brand’s new role as an essential service.
This included making Sobeys the first grocery store to implement Canada-wide Plexiglas checkout shields, beginning with an order Medline sent out before he’d even hung up his call with the Italian grocery chain CEO who pioneered the technique.
Faced with too many unknowns and not enough data, Medline said the crisis forced the team to cut the picture down to their core goals.
“Everything went back to three things,” Medline said. “Keep our customers and teammates safe, stock those shelves, and support local communities … especially charitable causes (that) continue to be in trouble.”
That attitude sounds similar to what any corporate leader would say about getting through the pandemic.
What makes Medline stand out nine months in, is his continued willingness to back up that rhetoric with both money and action. He has reinstated hazard bonuses for front-line workers, maintained his commitment to Sobeys’ charity events and declined to raise fees on Empire’s food suppliers, even when that meant breaking stride with major competitors in the grocery industry.
Read the Star’s full story on why Sobeys is saying yes to ‘hero pay’ and no to gouging suppliers.
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7:22 a.m. Procurement Minister Anita Anand says that as soon as she knows when the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine will arrive in Canada, she will share that information with Canadians.
But Anand told The Canadian Press in an interview this week that the original contracts to buy COVID-19 vaccines had to be vague about delivery dates because nobody knew at the time if the vaccines would be successful.
It’s only in the last few weeks, when the leading candidates from Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca reported such positive results from their large clinical trials, that the way forward became clear enough for Anand’s department to start asking the companies to be more specific about when they can make good on their contracts with Canada.
“We put these contracts in place in order to place Canadians in the best stead possible, of any country in the world, recognizing that we would need to negotiate additional terms such as precise delivery dates, once a vaccine was discovered, and regulatory approval was obtained,” she said. “And that is what’s happening now.”
7:20 a.m. Much of California is on the brink of sweeping new restrictions on businesses and activities, a desperate attempt to slow the frighteningly rapid escalation of coronavirus cases that threatens to overwhelm hospitals.
Five San Francisco Bay Area counties imposed a new stay-at-home order for their residents that will take effect Sunday. Southern California and a large swath of the central portion of the state could join this weekend.
Those two regions have seen their intensive care unit capacity fall below the 15% threshold that under a new state stay-at-home order will trigger new restrictions barring all on-site restaurant dining and close hair and nail salons, movie theatres and many other businesses, as well as museums and playgrounds.
If their capacity remains below that level when the data is updated Saturday, the closures will take effect Sunday and stay in effect at least three weeks.
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the new plan Thursday. It is the most restrictive order since he imposed the country’s first statewide stay-at-home rule in March.
7:07 a.m. Thousands of doctors, teachers and others in high-risk groups have signed up for COVID-19 vaccinations in Moscow starting Saturday, a precursor to a sweeping Russia-wide immunization effort.
The vaccinations come three days after President Vladimir Putin ordered the launch of a “large-scale” COVID-19 immunization campaign even though a Russian-designed vaccine has yet to complete the advanced studies needed to ensure its effectiveness and safety in line with established scientific protocols.
The Russian leader said Wednesday that more than 2 million doses of the Sputnik V jab will be available in the next few days, allowing authorities to offer jabs to medical workers and teachers across the country starting late next week.
Moscow, which currently accounts for about a quarter of the country’s new daily infections, moved ahead of the curve, opening 70 vaccination facilities on Saturday. Doctors, teachers and municipal workers were invited to book a time to receive a jab, and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said that about 5,000 signed up in a few hours after the system began operating on Friday.
7 a.m. Iran’s death toll from the global pandemic has risen above 50,000, according to state television, as the country grapples with the worst outbreak in the Middle East.
A two-week partial lockdown in the capital of Tehran and other major cities helped slow, but not stop the rising wave of deaths from the coronavirus over the past few weeks.
President Hassan Rouhani warned Saturday that the lockdown could be extended to more cities or reimposed on the capital, if people do not abide by health measures.
“Tehran is on the borderline of being in the red zone,” Rouhani said. “All people and public officials should try to implement measures and regulations.”
Health Ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari said Saturday that the countrywide death toll the previous day was 321.
Friday 6 p.m. The FBI is telling anyone who underwent a coronavirus test at a New Jersey laboratory to get retested and to contact the agency.
In a statement Friday on Twitter, the FBI’s Newark office urges people who were recently tested for the virus at Infinity Diagnostic Laboratory in Ventnor “to be retested as soon as possible.” It also asks that anyone who was administered a finger-prick blood test at the laboratory to contact a victim assistance unit at the FBI.
The announcement gave no further details, and a message left with the FBI seeking further information was not immediately returned.
Voicemail for the company’s operations director Friday evening said it was closed and did not offer the opportunity to leave a message.
