When will Canadians get vaccines delivered? When will we be able to get shots into arms?
The truth is the answers to these questions are getting murkier by the day despite assurances from the Trudeau government that European export controls won’t affect us and despite an announcement that vaccines will be made in Canada.
How pandemic lockdowns cleaned the air but resulted in a warmer planet
Earth spiked a bit of a fever in 2020, partly because of cleaner air from pandemic lockdowns, a new study has found.
For a short time, temperatures in some places in the eastern United States, Russia and China were as much as 0.3 to 0.37 degrees Celsius warmer. That’s due to less soot and sulfate particles from car exhaust and burning coal, which normally cool the atmosphere temporarily by reflecting the sun’s heat, Tuesday’s study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters reported.
Canada the only G7 country to take vaccines from fund for developing countries
Canada is the only G7 country to draw on a supply of COVID-19 vaccines meant primarily for developing countries, according to new data released Wednesday.
The COVAX program, co-ordinated by the World Health Organization and Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, pools funds from wealthier countries to buy vaccines for themselves and for 92 low- and middle-income nations that can’t afford to buy on their own.
Information released Wednesday by Gavi shows Canada is among just a few rich countries exercising their options to buy vaccines from the international group. The vast majority of countries receiving the first vaccine shipments from COVAX are low- and middle-income countries.
Despite the enthusiasm Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tried to bring to his announcement Tuesday, when he said that Canada had struck a deal to manufacture millions of COVID-19 vaccines at home, the agreement won’t do much to get us out of the acute phase of this pandemic.
That’s because the deal with Novavax to churn out its vaccine at Canada’s National Research Council (NRC) in Montreal is contingent on the completion of a new production centre, which won’t be finished until summer or early fall.
Ontario is reporting 1,172 cases of #COVID19 and over 52,400 tests completed. Locally, there are 444 new cases in Toronto, 199 in Peel and 110 in York Region.
As of 8:00 p.m. yesterday, 348,331 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered.
— Christine Elliott (@celliottability) February 3, 2021
WARMINGTON: Octogenarian church-goer hit with lockdown ticket
AYLMER — Martha Oppel survived Hitler’s Nazis and Stalin’s communists without a police officer knocking on her door.
Then along came the COVID-19 pandemic 75 years later. At 85, Oppel is in trouble with the law for attending church.
The federal government is investing $64 million in COVID-19 vaccine education campaigns to help combat vaccine hesitancy and misinformation in Canada, while also encouraging Canadians to get the shot.
It’s quite the juxtaposition: Much of Canada remains under some fairly strict public health measures due to COVID-19. Masking, business closures, a curfew in Quebec and a stay-at-home order in Ontario.
In the United States, the opposite is happening.
The highly-contagious COVID-19 variant that first emerged in the United Kingdom appears to have evolved again to include a “worrying” new mutation, researchers said.
…Experts now fear that E484K has allowed the South Africa and Brazil strains to get past the natural antibodies of those who have already recovered from becoming infected in the first wave.
After running on a promise to fix the pandemic, Biden admitted, “there’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months.”
Except wear two masks.
“To Prevent COVID, wear 2 masks,” The Los Angeles Times declares. “Time to double,” The Washington Post urges. “Health authority recommends Laredoans limit leaving their homes, or wear two masks if they must,” The Laredo Morning Times warns.
Last week I wrote that Canada was No. 18 in vaccinating its population. As of Monday, according to Oxford University’s vaccine tracker, Canada had dropped to No. 28.
On Sunday, the U.S. inoculated 1.5 million people. On a per capita basis, the Brits did even better; they got 600,000 vaccinated.
Pandemic spending this year is expected to hike Canada’s combined federal and provincial debt to $2 trillion, double the $1 trillion debt in 2007-08, according to a new study by the Fraser Institute.
The figures, adjusted for inflation, mean that in the current fiscal year, Canada’ combined debt will equal 91.6% of the annual output of the Canadian economy, up from 65.2% last year.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau today is expected to announce the makings of an agreement to produce COVID-19 vaccines within Canada.
Industry Minister Francois-Phillipe Champagne tells The Canadian Press the government is moving quickly to start making COVID-19 vaccines itself, instead of being entirely reliant on foreign production for the most sought-after product in the world.
A bold strategy, lets see if it pays off. The ROC will just love that Quebec benefits.
Scammers are producing and selling fake negative coronavirus test certificates in airports, stations and online around Europe in the latest example of opportunistic coronavirus-related crime, the EU’s law enforcement agency has said.
“As long as travel restrictions remain in place due to the Covid-19 situation, it is highly likely that production and sales of fake test certificates will prevail,” Europol, the bloc’s police cooperation and coordination agency, said on Monday.
Please note that Toronto Public Health has now migrated all of their data to the provincial data system, CCM. This migration has impacted today’s daily counts, resulting in an underestimation of cases. We anticipate fluctuations in case numbers over the next few days.
— Christine Elliott (@celliottability) February 2, 2021
Poll suggests Ontarians blame Ottawa for COVID-19 vaccine shortages
The Campaign Research survey suggests 52 per cent believed it was Ottawa’s fault that supplies are low while 15 per cent pointed the finger at the provincial government with one per cent citing municipalities and 32 per cent unsure.
“Ontarians are very clear about who they blame for this,” Campaign Research principal Nick Kouvalis said Monday.
“The federal government is really not getting a pass and should be extremely concerned,” said Kouvalis.
Yes, there is bread and water served in this detention centre.