Anti-vaccination protesters have gathered across Australia ahead of the launch of the country’s coronavirus inoculation programme.
Protests were held in cities including Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, with participants chanting slogans like: “My body, my choice.”
The rallies were largely peaceful, but police made several arrests in Melbourne, local media reported.
The national rollout of the Pfizer vaccine is set to begin on Monday.
Ontario’s fiscal watchdog says the province lost more than 355,000 jobs last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Financial Accountability Officer says in a new report Thursday that the job losses represent the single largest annual decline on record.
The report says that in addition to job losses, more than 765,000 Ontario residents worked fewer hours because of the pandemic.
“From March 15 to Nov. 30, 2020, the estimated cost of `Other Leave with Pay (699)’ is approximately $819 million, based on the average daily pay rate of roughly $300 for federal public service employees entitled to leave,” says the Treasury Board document, dated Feb. 19.
Ontario is reporting 1,228 cases of #COVID19 and nearly 57,200 tests completed. Locally, there are 331 new cases in Toronto, 228 in Peel and 132 in York Region.
As of 8:00 p.m. yesterday, 540,129 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered.
— Christine Elliott (@celliottability) February 20, 2021
MPs pass motion requiring Liberal government to let them see COVID vaccine contracts
Opposition party MPs have succeeded in passing a motion requiring the Liberal government to give them access to contracts with seven COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers.
But whether the documents will actually be released to the health committee, and in what form, remains unclear. When asked whether the government will comply with the motion and make the agreements available, a spokesperson for Procurement Minister Anita Anand didn’t respond by deadline.
We’ll find out the Kielburgers are making vaccines at their Kenya resort.
WASHINGTON — NY Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is calling for an investigation into Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s mounting nursing home crisis on Friday.
“I support our state’s return to co-equal governance and stand with our local officials calling for a full investigation of the Cuomo administration’s handling of nursing homes during COVID-19,” she wrote in a statement.
Rattled Andrew Cuomo rants against COVID-19 ‘lies’
A defensive Gov. Andrew Cuomo went on a 15-minute rant Friday in which he vowed to counter what he claimed were “lies” and “misinformation” about his handling of nursing homes amid the COVID-19 pandemic — as Health Commissioner Howard Zucker said officials made the right call “at that moment in time.”
Toronto and Peel Region will remain under a stay-at-home order for at least another two weeks but some restrictions will be eased in York Region next week as it enters the red zone of the province’s reopening framework, the province announced Friday.
At the request of the medical officers of health in both Peel Region and Toronto, strict lockdown measures will be maintained in the two COVID-19 hot spots until at least March 8, the Ford government says.
The United States and the United Kingdom hit home runs on COVID vaccine development. Canada hit a single and is stuck on first base.
There’s one big reason why: our federal government failed to move quickly on procuring COVID vaccines because its leaders did not make Canadian vaccine procurement an urgent national priority, one where failure was not an option.
Ontario is reporting 1,150 cases of #COVID19 and nearly 65,400 tests completed. Locally, there are 376 new cases in Toronto, 264 in Peel and 108 in York Region.
As of 8:00 p.m. yesterday, 518,834 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered.
— Christine Elliott (@celliottability) February 19, 2021
Colleges stress public responsibilities as MD, nurse set to speak at rally against COVID-19 measures
As a B.C. doctor and a registered nurse get set to speak at a Vancouver “freedom rally” this weekend, their regulatory colleges say health professionals have a duty not to encourage people to violate public health advice on COVID-19.
Dr. Stephen Malthouse of Denman Island and Jeri-Lyn Bone, a registered nurse working in Surrey, are both scheduled speakers at a demonstration that promises: “COVID & Vaccine Truths Exposed by Real Medical Experts.” The so-called B.C. Grand Freedom Rally is co-organized by eight different groups known for their opposition to COVID-related restrictions, masks and vaccines.
A new poll from Ipsos found that 71 per cent of Canadians are “angry” that Canada is falling behind countries like the U.S. and the U.K. when it comes to the pace of our COVID-19 vaccine rollout. On top of that, just 43 per cent believe Canada will meet Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s professed timeline of having a jab available for every Canadian who wants one by September.
There are lots of reasons to be pissed off at PM Asshat.
The WIV is at the center of widespread speculation that COVID-19 could have entered the human population in China due to an accidental lab leak. Researchers at the lab were studying bat-based coronaviruses prior to the outbreak, a project partially backed by $600,000 in U.S. taxpayer funds routed to the lab through the nonprofit group EcoHealth Alliance.
For New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo, all those 15,000 nursing home deaths brought on by COVID patients coming back from hospitals and into nursing homes instead of President Trump’s offshore hospital ships and the cover-up in numbers was a communications problem.
In the UK a line was crossed when we enforced the first lockdown.
History attests that the defeat of a civilisation involves not only its political eclipse, but also the collapse of its values. The relationship between the two varies significantly. Sometimes, a defeated people are forced to adopt their conqueror’s beliefs; hence survivors of the American conquests were assimilated into white culture, to ‘kill the Indian and save the man’. At other times, a lack of conviction creates inner weakness, until, as in Rome, the barbarians have only to shove on the rotten gates to induce their collapse.
Many of the NBA’s top players are expressing apprehension about accepting invitations to participate in league-sponsored public service announcements to bolster broader acceptance of the coronavirus vaccine, sources told ESPN.
The NBA’s outreach to the agents of many of the league’s elite players — with hopes of getting stars to participate in PSAs to promote the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine — has been met with a tepid response, sources said. Player apprehensions about receiving the vaccine are consistent with those that also exist in Black communities throughout the country, agents and players told ESPN.
They probably don’t want to offend China.
Ontario is reporting 1,038 cases of #COVID19 and nearly 56,200 tests completed. Locally, there are 376 new cases in Toronto, 142 in Peel and 122 in York Region.
As of 8:00 p.m. yesterday, 501,867 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered.
— Christine Elliott (@celliottability) February 18, 2021
Good news from Justin? Serum Institute of India says will ship AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine to Canada in ‘less than a month’
Or is it? AstraZeneca’s vaccines go unused in EU as mutants spread
Just weeks ago, the European Union was clamouring for AstraZeneca Plc’s COVID-19 vaccine. Now, fewer than one-tenth of the doses delivered to Germany have been administered in the initial days of the rollout, and some health-care workers say they’re concerned about side effects.
… In an ambulance corps in Dortmund, one-quarter of the 300 people vaccinated late last week with the AstraZeneca shot called in sick afterward, a local newspaper reported, citing internal fire-department documents. Health officials in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, where Dortmund is located, recommended vaccinating smaller groups of health-care workers at a time to avoid staffing shortages, DPA reported.
