As ICUs fill up, doctors confront grim choice of who gets life-saving care

Hospitals are shifting critically ill patients around, looking for any empty bed. Nurses and doctors are putting in exhaustion-defying amounts of overtime. Some provinces are opening new intensive care unit capacity.

But it may not be enough to stave off a point no one wants to reach in the pandemic — when only a handful of ICU beds remain but a greater number of patients need those spots.

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Now Do Trudeau… Growing calls for Ontario Premier Doug Ford to resign amid worsening COVID-19 3rd wave

Now Do Trudeau… Growing calls for Ontario Premier Doug Ford to resign amid worsening COVID-19 3rd wave

Amid a public health crisis the likes of which Ontario has never seen, and a firestorm of criticism regarding the Ford government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic there are growing calls for the premier to step down.

On Sunday, a Washington Post op-ed by columnist David Moscrop titled “Doug Ford must resign” quickly became the most read story on the paper’s website. In the article, Moscrop wrote, “Over a year into the pandemic, things are worse in Ontario than they have been since it began.”

Doug is no great shakes but the Trudeau government has been downright criminal.

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Amid surging cases and ‘double mutant’ variant, flights from India touch down in Canada

Flights from Delhi continue to land in Canada despite India’s daily tally of COVID-19 infections surging to a record over the weekend — and amid the emergence of a new “double mutant” variant in the country.

A federal government website that lists flights where someone has been confirmed to have been infected with COVID-19shows that from April 4 to April 16, there were 120 flights with a COVID-positive passenger or passengers.

 

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Traffic jammed as Ottawa police set up checkpoints at Quebec border

Traffic was backed up on the bridges connecting Ottawa and Gatineau Monday morning as police began enforcing new pandemic travel restrictions.

The morning rush hour slowed to a crawl as vehicles waited in lineups at Ottawa police check points set up at midnight to restrict the movement of vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists from Quebec.

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Ontario reports 4,447 new Covid cases … Hydroxychloroquine Heresy! Lockdowns a waste of time say docs!

Ontario reports 4,447 new Covid cases … Hydroxychloroquine Heresy! Lockdowns a waste of time say docs!

Ontario reports more than 4,400 new COVID-19 cases today as virus-related hospitalizations surpass 2,200

Ontario is reporting more than 4,400 new COVID-19 cases today as virus-related hospitalizations surpass 2,200 in the province.

Provincial health officials are reporting 4,447 new infections today, up from 4,250 on Sunday but down from the record 4,812 cases confirmed on Friday.

The rolling seven-day average of new infections is now 4,345, up from 3,767 one week ago, and 2,757 two weeks earlier.


LEVY: Three prominent docs call lockdowns a waste of time

They’ve been called “witch doctors” and “snake oil salesmen” for daring to go against the prevailing “group think” about lockdowns and to challenge the “preening camera hungry” medical experts who don’t represent the experience of clinicians and nurses on the front lines of the COVID battle.

But in a lengthy Zoom interview this past week, Paul Elias Alexander, Howard Tenenbaum and Harvey Risch — all PhDs working out of prominent universities — told me flat-out that lockdowns are a complete waste of time.

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Ontario reports 4,250 new Covid cases … Big Doug Backs Down & Wuhan Flu is Airborne … this week … Next week spread by masks

Ontario reports 4,250 new Covid cases … Big Doug Backs Down & Wuhan Flu is Airborne … this week … Next week spread by masks

Ontario reports 4,250 new COVID-19 cases as hospitals set new occupancy record

Ontario reported 4,250 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday as well as 18 additional deaths, as overall hospital admissions and ICU occupancy increased to new whole-pandemic highs.

Ontario reported 4,362 new cases of COVID-19 on Saturday, and hospitalizations as counted by the Ministry of Health surpassed 2,000 for the first time in the whole pandemic.


Ontario walks back new pandemic police powers following widespread backlash

TORONTO — TORONTO – Ontario reversed course on sweeping new police powers Saturday, just one day after Premier Doug Ford announced the measures that triggered a swift and furious backlash.

Officers will no longer have the right to stop any pedestrian or driver to ask why they’re out or request their home address, Solicitor General Sylvia Jones said in a written statement on Saturday evening.

Instead, she said, police will only be able to stop people who they have reason to believe are participating in an “organized public event or social gathering.”


Experts find more evidence COVID-19 is airborne, that we need to rethink indoor spaces

The authors of a new paper that found increasingly concrete evidence that COVID-19 is “predominately” airborne say that we need to be focusing on preventing infections in indoor settings, and rethinking how ventilation systems either help spread or dissipate the virus.

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In Colorado, thousands receive “useless” first vaccination

In Colorado, thousands receive “useless” first vaccination

No, this isn’t a story about the J&J vaccine, which is still on “pause” anyway. But it’s yet another headline that the nation didn’t need as the vaccination effort rolls on. Out in Colorado Springs, Colorado, at the Dr. Moma Health and Wellness Clinic, a vaccination pod had been set up and in operation for several months. But on April 6, something went seriously wrong.

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Warnings ignored, action delayed: Ontario’s road to its most dire COVID crisis

When Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced the current stay-at-home order on April 7, he said the province’s COVID-19 crisis had become worse than predicted.

“The capacity at the ICUs and these variants have taken off even beyond what they told us,” the premier said. “And the second I found out yesterday, immediately I asked them to start writing up the orders.”

But modelling presented two months earlier signalled the trouble to come. And on April 1, the week before Ford’s announcement, projections showed a new stay-at-home order would be crucial to getting the increasingly devastating third wave under control.

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