“China eats weird animals disease”

Spain’s health minister has said the country will create a vaccination registry that will include those who refuse to be vaccinated against Covid-19, yielding a document that could potentially be shared with other countries in Europe.

Days after EU countries began rolling out the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, Salvador Illa said that those who reject the vaccine for “whatever reason” would be documented, as is done currently for those with certain other treatments.

“What we will have is a registry, that will also be shared with our European partners … of those who have been offered it and rejected it,” Illa told the broadcaster La Sexta. “The document will not be made public and it will be done with the utmost respect for the legislation on data protection.”

Ontario is reporting 2,553 cases of #COVID19 today, and 1,939 cases reported yesterday. Today, there are 895 new cases in Toronto, 496 in Peel, 147 in Windsor-Essex County, 144 in Hamilton and 142 in York Region.

— Christine Elliott (@celliottability) December 29, 2020

When it comes to pandemics, COVID-19 might not be ‘the big one’: WHO

TORONTO — Experts say that as bad as the novel coronavirus pandemic has been, worse outbreaks may be coming.

At the final World Health Organization (WHO) press conference on COVID-19 in 2020, Dr. Mike Ryan, head of the WHO emergencies program, called the current pandemic a “wake-up call” on emergency preparedness.

“It may come as a shock to people that this pandemic has been very severe — it’s spread around the world extremely quickly, it’s effected every corner of this planet — but this is not necessarily ‘the big one,'” Ryan said.

Family members of residents in Toronto’s long-term care homes are pleading for more government support as deadly outbreaks continue to surge amid the second wave of COVID-19.

There are active outbreaks in 162 LTC homes according to the province’s latest count, which represents just over a quarter of all facilities in Ontario.

Active cases have now reached 1,075 among residents and 967 among LTC staff.

Those figures have been on a steep and steady climb since late August, when there was briefly only a single LTC resident in all of Ontario with a confirmed case of COVID-19.

They’re bad for the country, but good for the Left. So expect more of the same.

Count me among the Pollyannas who was sure that when the election was done the pandemic would be “done,” too. November 4 would dawn bright and clear, the thunderheads of contagion looming on the horizon dissipated by a dry air mass of political reality.

It took less than a month for students attending virtual school to devise new ways to cheat.

From texting friends on the sly to downloading apps that spit out answers, educators say the pandemic-induced move to an online classroom has offered up a wealth of tech-driven workarounds to actually doing the work.

Olivia Meleta, a high school math teacher in Thornhill, Ont., said she realized something was amiss in late September when several students learning virtually submitted tests with matching solutions – using a method she and her colleagues don’t teach.

TORONTO — For many small businesses in Ontario, the province-wide lockdown that began on Boxing Day is the last straw.

One business that couldn’t survive another lockdown is the Pickering Flea Market in the Greater Toronto Area. After almost half a century, the large indoor market with hundreds of vendors is closing its doors.

“The COVID outbreak has made it very, very hard to operate,” Erik Tamm, general manager of the Pickering Markets, told CTV News.

COVID-19 has helped turn dozens of healthcare leaders into newly-minted billionaires, according to a report.

Fifty doctors, scientists and healthcare entrepreneurs earned billionaire status this year — the majority of whom are from China, where the virus first emerged in December 2019, Forbes reported.

Of the new cohort, there were 28 “pandemic billionaires” who hailed from China, the outlet reported.

(Pic – Windmill Girls influenza vaccination London, 63)

The Swedish government has proposed a bill that would allow it to close businesses and fine Covid-19 rule-breakers. Officials previously said the old model of containing the virus was a “failure.”

If approved by parliament, the law would take effect on January 10 and stand until the end of September 2021.

“In very serious situations, the government will be able to decide on more extensive measures to prevent crowding,” Health Minister Lena Hallengren said at a news briefing.

“That includes the closure of shops, public transport, shopping centers, or other kinds of businesses that fall under the new law.”

With Ontario’s latest pandemic lockdown, you can’t go to a New Year’s Eve party, shop in a store, hit the gym, or do a lot of other things.

But travellers can fly to Toronto from places like India or Nigeria to visit family or pursue university studies with no problem. There are no strict lockdown measures in place at Pearson International to deal with that concern.