It is unconscionable for Health Canada to have ignored the advice of pharmaceutical makers and allowed inordinate delays in administering second doses of COVID-19 vaccines.
Two more studies have come my way, added to a British one I wrote about last week, that underscore the danger to lives of Canada’s reckless procurement failure compounded by the world’s only federally approved dosage rationing of four months.
Despite nearly two decades of warnings, planning and government spending, the Public Health Agency of Canada was not ready for the global pandemic and did not appreciate the threat it posed in its early stages, Canada’s auditor general says.
In a hard-hitting review released today, Auditor General Karen Hogan took the country’s primary pandemic response agency to task for failures in early warning, surveillance, risk assessments, data-sharing with the provinces and follow-up on Canadian travellers who were ordered into quarantine.
Ontario reports 2,380 new COVID-19 infections and 17 more deaths; cases are over reported due to data catch-up
Ontario reported more than 2,300 new COVID-19 cases but the Ministry of Health says today’s case count is over reported due to data catch-up.
Provincial health officials logged 2,380 new infections on Thursday, compared to 1,571 on Wednesday.
However, officials say the latest numbers are higher by approximately 280 cases due to a data catch-up process related to the provincial system.
Canadian vaccine shipments threatened by EU and India
Just as Canada’s vaccine program was starting to gain steam, comes word that it could all fall apart.
Both the European Union and India, our major sources of vaccine doses — our only sources thus far — are both looking at blocking the export of vaccines to deal with a slow rollout at home and rising COVID-19 case counts.
Premier Doug Ford said it would be “absolutely terrible” if Ontario was forced to go back into lockdown because of the third wave of COVID-19 and that it’s critical people remain cautious and vigilant to protect themselves.
During an interview on SiriusXM’s Canada Talks Wednesday, Trudeau told host Peter Mansbridge he wished he had handled some things in the early days of the pandemic differently, but when he closed the border wasn’t one of them.
TORONTO — The Ford government is continuing with increased healthcare spending and cash grants to businesses and parents as its pathway out of the pandemic will be paved with more than $100 billion in new debt and deficits that are not likely to end before 2029.
The deficit for 2021-2022 is projected at $33.1 billion, down from $38.5 billion last year, with deficits of $27.7 billion and $20.2 billion projected for 2022-23 and 2023-24.
More people than ever in the United Kingdom are suffering from food poverty, with even working families turning to charities for help, aid agencies say.
In a damning statistic issued in December 2019, fact-checker FullFact said there were more food banks in the UK than outlets of the fast-food chain McDonald’s.
“It is true that there are now more food banks in the UK than there are McDonald’s,” Liam Evans of food aid provider turn2us told DW. He says there are at least 2,000 food banks and around 1,300 McDonald’s branches across the UK.
…There are many factors propelling surges, but Sharkawy points to the slow vaccine rollout and variants being the main drivers of the third wave.
“What we’re witnessing now is a bit of a perfect storm,” he said, adding that complacency with some of the public health restrictions isn’t helping.
…In an article titled “Did the coronavirus leak from a lab? These scientists say we shouldn’t rule it out,” MIT Technology Review reports that “A group of 26 scientists, social scientists, and science communicators… have now signed their own letter arguing that WHO investigators lacked ‘the mandate, the independence, or the necessary accesses’ to determine whether or not SARS-CoV-2 could have been the result of a laboratory incident.” The letter was in response to a letter from 27 other scientists published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, insisting that SARS-CoV-2 had a natural origin, and dismissing any alternate theories as conspiracy theories that create “fear, rumors, and prejudice.”
Ontario is reporting 1,571 cases of #COVID19 and nearly 52,000 tests completed. Locally, there are 459 new cases in Toronto, 309 in Peel and 143 in York Region.
As of 8:00 p.m. yesterday, 1,676,150 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered.
— Christine Elliott (@celliottability) March 24, 2021
Doug Ford’s Tories set to unveil a ‘pandemic budget’ for Ontario
Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives are set to table a big-spending provincial budget aimed at tackling the health and economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy — Ford’s third treasurer in three years — will release the fiscal blueprint Wednesday at Queen’s Park.
“I will not hesitate to spend whatever it takes to protect people’s lives,” Ford said Tuesday.
Health Canada is in the process of adding a warning about a rare possible side-effect of blood clots from the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine but is still certain the vaccine is safe and effective against COVID-19.
The department’s chief medical adviser Dr. Supriya Sharma says the warning comes on the heels of a similar warning in Europe last week but doesn’t change Health Canada’s analysis that the vaccine’s benefits outweigh its risks.
Could the common cold actually play a role in helping mankind ward off COVID-19? Researchers from a British university said this week that it appears that could be the case.
A new poll suggests Canadians remain deeply wary about the prospect of allowing visitors from the United States.
The online Leger poll was conducted last week for the Association for Canadian Studies to mark one full year of restricted travel at the Canada-U.S. border.
It found 70 per cent of 2,200 Canadian respondents were either very or somewhat worried about allowing cross-border travel.
Well this is the worst thing I've ever watched pic.twitter.com/mf7OlQYfUq
— Ben McDonald (@Bmac0507) March 23, 2021
Wearing masks and social distancing could go on for “years”, says Public Health England’s chief of immunisation.
Dr Mary Ramsey claimed on Sunday that social distancing and other practices like wearing a face-covering would go on for “quite a long period of time”.
“People have got used to those lower-level restrictions now, and people can live with them, and the economy can still go on with those less severe restrictions in place.
