Quebec closing border to Ontario Monday, 20,000 AstraZeneca vaccines available in Montreal CBC News · Posted: Apr 17, 2021 8:20 AM ET | Last Updated: 3 hours ago Quebec reported 1,527 new cases on Friday and seven more deaths. Since the start of the pandemic, there have been 334,071 confirmed cases and 10,785 people have died. There are 664 people in hospital (an increase of three), including 167 in intensive care (an increase of eight). 74,927 vaccine doses were administered in the last 24 hours for a total of 2,223,775 since Dec. 14. Quebec Deputy Premier Geneviève Guilbault says the province will be closed to travellers coming in from Ontario starting Monday. Her announcement, made on Twitter Friday, comes just after Ontario Premier Doug Ford said his province is closed as well, amid a surge in COVID-19 cases and growing concern over the variants. Guilbault said the province is still in discussions with Ontario to determine the exact terms of the closure. On Ontario's side, exceptions will include people going to work, seeking medical care, transporting goods and exercising Indigenous treaty rights. Quebec to close border to Ontario, as Ontario does the same 20,000 AstraZeneca doses in Montreal Montreal public health and provincial authorities are calling on everyone over the age of 55 to get their first shot of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, with 20,000 doses available at drop-in centres in Montreal this weekend. Trucks with loudspeakers on them will be driving around some Montreal neighbourhoods, including Côte-des-Neiges, in the coming days, encouraging residents to head to the drop-in sites. Earlier this week, Health Minister Christian Dubé said the province may be able to move up its vaccine timeline and start inoculating the general population by the end of next month if more eligible residents get the AstraZeneca shot in the coming weeks. Right now, the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine is only available to Quebecers between the ages of 55 and 79, but Dubé has suggested that age range could be expanded, pending public health approval. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/covid-19-in-quebec-need-to-know-april-17-18-1.5990862 ---------- wrbtrader
Feds secure 8 million more Pfizer doses, as Moderna cuts coming shipments Published Friday, April 16, 2021 10:44AM EDT Last Updated Friday, April 16, 2021 4:56PM EDT OTTAWA -- The federal government has secured an additional eight million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine coming over the next few months, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Friday, just as Moderna revealed coming shipments will be smaller than promised. These coming Pfizer shots will be on top of the existing doses Canada has already purchased, and will see four million additional doses arrive in May, two million additional shots in June as well as moving up 400,000 doses from the third quarter into that month, followed by an additional two million more doses being added to the July deliveries. Prior to this update, Canada was scheduled to receive more than one million doses a week through to the end of May, and starting in June Pfizer had committed to sending closer to two million doses. With the new contract, Canada is now on track to have a total of 24 million doses of the two-shot vaccine between April and June. Tracking every case of COVID-19 in Canada Coronavirus vaccination tracker: How many people in Canada have received shots? Ontario extends stay-at-home order, restricts interprovincial travel as province loses battle against COVID-19 Feds secure 8 million more Pfizer doses, as Moderna cuts coming shipments Health Canada reviewing submission to use Pfizer vaccine on children 12 and older Brazil asks women to delay pregnancy over new coronavirus variant fears Menstrual changes to be expected after COVID-19 vaccine, during pandemic: experts Ontario turns to other provinces for 'urgently needed' help with overloaded ICUs COVID-19 boosters could become a yearly ritual, says epidemiologist PHAC suspends added screening guidelines for travellers from Brazil amid COVID-19 variant surge in Canada 'Extraordinary measures,' national approach needed to fight COVID-19 crisis: CMA Growing calls to prioritize daycare staff, early childhood educators for COVID-19 vaccines How a Twitter account is helping Canadians find vaccination appointments COVID-19 cases in Ontario will remain high into summer without six week stay-at-home order, modelling shows Ont. doctor admits 3 COVID-19 patients to ICU after they turned down vaccines Tracking variants of the novel coronavirus in Canada Full coverage at CTVNews.ca/Coronavirus Related Stories Vaccine ramp-up still plagued by delays, uncertain deliveries After shortages in the winter due to an expansion at Pfizer’s European manufacturing facility, Canada has consistently been receiving the promised shipments from the pharmaceutical giant, something Trudeau thanked them for on Friday. “More doses arriving sooner means more people getting their vaccines faster,” Trudeau said Friday. This increase though, follows on the heels of Procurement Minister Anita Anand confirming that late on Thursday that Moderna informed Canada that the next expected vaccine shipment scheduled for the end of April will be 650,000 doses instead of the more than 1.2 million expected. Further, Moderna is now saying that up to two million of the total 12.3 million doses promised to come to Canada this quarter “may” be delayed until the third quarter due to a “slower than anticipated ramp up of their production capacity” that is affecting a number of countries. Newsletter sign-up: Get The COVID-19 Brief sent to your inbox The government had already signalled that while the delivery was supposed to arrive the week of April 19-25, it could be later, meaning it may be early May before the deliveries make it out to the provinces and territories. “This news is obviously very disappointing. Our government will however continue to bring vaccines into the country in the face of volatile supply chains,” Anand said Friday. While Moderna met its first quarter dose commitments and moved its shipment intervals up from every three weeks, a “quality assurance processes backlog” has meant the latest shipments to Canada have been inconsistent. The last Moderna shipment to arrive on time and in full was on March 11. “We will continue to press Moderna, and all of our other suppliers to do everything possible to respect their delivery targets, and to provide more consistent delivery schedules,” said Anand. The opposition party health and procurement critics expressed frustration Friday with the Moderna delays, and hesitancy over celebrating the additional Pfizer shots until they land. “Although we are glad to hear about this news, we will hold off celebrations until doses are received. This government has a long track record of misleading Canadians and not delivering on promises,” said Conservative MP Pierre Paul-Hus. The Conservatives have tabled a motion to summon Moderna Canada representative Patricia Gauthier to testify at the House of Commons Health Committee to explain the delayed shipments. CTVNews.ca asked Moderna for comment on the coming shortages, but has yet to hear back. “Canadians should never have been put in this position. It’s a failure of federal leadership… People are incredibly frustrated as the third wave rages in parts of the country and I understand why,” said NDP MP Don Davies in a statement. J&J, ASTRAZENECA UPDATE Canada’s ramp-up phase of the national mass vaccination effort has been plagued by Moderna delays for weeks, while uncertainty is lingering over deliveries of AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses. These inconsistencies in deliveries have frustrated premiers and Canada’s logistics lead Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin has pledged to work closely on risk managing the situation. On Friday, Anand announced that Canada will receive an initial shipment of 300,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine during the week of April 27, to be delivered to the provinces in early May. She said “more substantial deliveries” will be coming later in the second quarter, and into the summer. As for AstraZeneca, Canada is set to see a total of 4.1 million vaccines arrive by the end of June with the bulk of deliveries set to come sometime between July and September. So far, deliveries of the AstraZeneca vaccine have only started to trickle in from smaller deals Canada made to get doses from COVAX, India, and the United States, rather than from the main contract with AstraZeneca-Oxford. “I spoke with AstraZeneca executives this morning, and am pressing for more AstraZeneca doses to Canada in the coming weeks and months ahead,” Anand said. According to new documents tabled in Parliament late Friday, As of September 2020 Canada was anticipating paying $8.18 per dose of AstraZeneca from the Oxford deal, with deliveries starting at the end of this quarter and extending into the July to September period.The government has not released vaccine contracts or confirmed specifically how much Canada is paying for each shot. In total, following Friday’s updates, Canada is set to receive between 48 and 50 million doses of approved COVID-19 vaccines from the four pharmaceutical companies by the end of June. REWORKING ALLOCATIONS? The pressure to vaccinate more Canadians is being magnified by the exploding third wave of infections in several major provinces, seeing the Canadian Medical Association call for “extraordinary” new measures, including marshalling national resources. The CMA is calling on the federal government to “consider re-prioritization of its vaccine distribution strategy” to focus on areas in urgent need rather than the “per-capita approach” currently implemented. Asked whether this is something the federal government is considering taking steps towards, Trudeau didn’t directly answer, saying generally that he’s open to adjusting the rollout as the provinces see fit. Trudeau said Friday that Ontario has reached out for more vaccine support and the federal government is “standing by” to send the Canadian Red Cross to help boost the province’s mobile vaccination teams, and talks are ongoing about extra health care workers, as Premier Doug Ford turns to other provinces for help. “Right now in this third wave there are hotspots in different parts of the country, particularly in Ontario, but there are also concerns and case loads rising right across the country,” he said. With files from CTV News’ Christy Somos, Michel Boyer, and Annie Bergeron-Oliver. https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/fed...es-as-moderna-cuts-coming-shipments-1.5390234 ---------- wrbtrader
Canadians got complacent, because their handling of covid was "so much better than the US". I still see dickwads in the grocery store without a mask, and proud of it. Here in Calgary the variants are the majority of cases now.
We're under restrictions again here in Québec... I was out for a long walk (cool down) after a morning of indoor rowing and outdoor biking. I saw several none essential business Open for business and people shopping clients such as a pastry store, chocolate store all while the province is on heavy restrictions as in these particular businesses are suppose to be close during the restrictions. Simply, as usual, there are businesses that will violate the current health guidelines and the ones in the recent past that did such (e.g. Mega Fitness) were order closed for violating Covid restrictions. https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/quebec-gym-ordered-to-shut-down-after-68-positive-covid-19-cases-owner-hospitalized-1.5369636?cache=/7.343115/7.343115 After my walk, I went to the local grocery store and saw an elderly person in their coughing up a storm...lifting up his face mask to cough. Nobody told him to exit the store and only return when he's no longer coughing like that. The strange part...the store has a delivery service free of charge for the elderly. I was so disturbed by his coughing...I turned around and headed home. I'll get some groceries another day next week. wrbtrader
I hear ya. The cause and effect of it is so apparent. Kenney lifts restrictions and new cases rise, he reimposes them and new cases fall. I think he's comfortable at around 700 new cases for the province per day, but since the latest round of re-opening we're over twice that right now.
Depends where you live. Public complacency is not a big problem in Southern Ontario. The government was too slow to roll out the vaccines until April and they allowed international travel from countries like the UK where there were huge variant outbreaks ( the first 5 identified UK variant cases were traced directly to travel from the UK to Ottawa ). The international travel thing has been a huge screw up. Toronto is a massive sprawling city that has gotten through Covid relatively well by NA standards except for the privately run long term care homes. The UK variant is a new issue, but one that was anticipated by the medical community long before the government. Once it became apparent they were screwing up the various governments are trying to mitigate the damage.
‘This doesn’t feel like the right moment’ to reopen U.S. border, Canadian official says By David Rasbach April 17, 2021 05:00 AM, Updated April 17, 2021 09:56 AM The border U.S.-Canadian border has been closed to non-essential travel since March 21, 2020, to help slow the spread of COVID-19. By Warren Sterling The COVID-induced closure of the border between U.S. and Canada is set to expire this week, but all signs are pointing to that ban on non-essential travel between the two countries being extended another month. In fact, with COVID cases, hospitalizations and death totals increasing north of the border, the question isn’t whether we will be seeing our friends from British Columbia anytime soon, but rather will they be allowed to travel to see their Canadian neighbors in Alberta, the Northwest Territories or the Yukon Territory. British Columbia Premier John Horgan is considering restricting travel to and from the province in an effort to stem a third wave of the disease in the country, according to a CBC story. “We’ve not taken anything off the table, but practicality is first and foremost in our mind,” Horgan said according to the CBC. “We will use the tools that are available to us if we believe they are effective, but deployment of those tools is a challenge. We haven’t taken travel restrictions off the board, quite frankly.” A number have experts have called on government leaders to make the move to curb the spread of COVID variants, according to a CBC story, especially the P.1 (Brazil variant), which has been detected in 555 cases within the province in the past week. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he supports restricting travel between provinces and territories in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19 in the country. “Every step of the way, I’ve been supporting premiers and territorial leaders on what they need to do to keep people safe,” Trudeau told the CBC. “As we saw with the Atlantic bubble, as we saw with the Arctic territories, they make decisions around closing off the regions. That is something that we are supportive of.” Ontario announced Friday that it was closing its provincial borders to non-essential travel, according to a Ottawa Citizen story. That comes as Canada’s seven-day average of new cases per million residents (207.27 average) surpassed the rate of the United States (206.66 average) last weekend, according to a WebMD story. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention even issued a warning to U.S. travelers to avoid Canada for now, even if they are fully vaccinated. The U.S. and Canada first agreed to close the border in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19 during the opening stages of the pandemic in mid-March 2020. The closure began March 21 has since been extended on month-by-month basis 12 times now. It was last extended on March 18 and is currently set to expire Wednesday, April 21 — though chances the closure isn’t extended again seem very slim. Earlier this month, Canadian Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc said it was too soon for the Canadian federal government to engage in discussion with the U.S. about reopening the border. “This doesn’t feel like the right moment to have those conversations,” LeBlanc told CBC. “We do recognize, as vaccination rates go up and, hopefully, as we see the public health measures that are in place now bring down those case counts, there will be a conversation that we can have both with the American administration and with provinces and territories about what is the right posture at the international borders. “But for the moment, there’s no active discussion [about] adjusting those measures.” Congressman calls for phased reopening Despite the climbing numbers in Canada, New York Rep. Brian Higgins is calling for a phased reopening beginning next month, according to a story by Spectrum News. “President Biden has said that we should be back to a semblance of normalcy by July 4, and we need a plan so as to give people something to look forward to as it relates to the opening of the U.S.-Canadian border,” Higgins said, according to Spectrum News. Higgins is asking the Department of Homeland Security to expand its definition of essential travelers allowed to cross the border to include people with property, business interests or family members on the other side of the border — a move he said “can be done both safely and successfully,” according to the story. Higgins is also pushing for a full reopening by July, the story said, though he thinks safe social distancing, masks and vaccination should be a requirement. “I think it is fair at a time of a public health crisis to require people that want to move between the United States and Canada, that they have to have a vaccine,” he said. “It’s intended to keep them safe, but also their family and our Canadian neighbors.” Higgins isn’t alone, as protesters in Buffalo, N.Y., on Monday, April 12, took to Pat Sole Park near the Peace Bridge to call on government leaders to find a solution to allowing families separated by the border to reunite, according to a story by local TV station WIVB. COVID numbers update As of Friday afternoon, the United States continues to have the highest number of COVID cases in the world with more than 31.5 million confirmed cases and 566,000 related deaths, according to the John Hopkins University COVID-19 dashboard. Canada, meanwhile, was 22nd overall with more than 1.1 million cases and 23,000 related deaths. The U.S. is the third-most populated country in the world with more than 331 million residents, according to worlometers.info, while Canada is No. 39 with more than 37 million residents. According to the British Columbia COVID-19 dashboard as of Thursday, April 16, the province has seen 116,075 total cases during the pandemic and 1,524 confirmed deaths — an increase of 26,648 cases and 113 deaths since the last border extension was announced March 18. With a population of approximately 5.1 million, British Columbia has seen an infection rate of 522.5 cases and 2.2 deaths per 100,000 residents since March 18. The Washington State Department of Health, meanwhile, reported 355,387 confirmed cases and 5,362 related deaths on Thursday — an increase of 24,278 cases and 206 deaths since March 18. With a population of approximately 7.5 million, the state has averaged 323.7 cases and 2.7 deaths per 100,000 residents since March 18. Washington state reports administering 4,299,351 vaccine doses, or approximately 0.57 doses per resident, while British Columbia reports administering 1,235,863 doses, or approximately 0.24 per resident. Closure economic impact Whatcom County is certainly feeling the economic impact of the border closure, which is now less than a week away from marking a full year. The Western Washington University Border Policy Research Institute found before the pandemic that Canadians comprise approximately 75% of cross-border travelers to and from Whatcom County, depending on the exchange rate when the border is open, according to information Director Laurie Trautman emailed to The Bellingham Herald for an earlier story. In 2018, that would have represented approximately 10.5 million southbound Canadian travelers through the Blaine, Lynden, Sumas and Point Roberts points of entry. Those Canadians represent a large portion of consumers in Whatcom County — anywhere from 2% to 46% of the weekend customer base Whatcom County retailers see, Trautman reported, adding that the average is about 17%. Essential travel between the two countries is still allowed, though, and that includes transportation of freight. Bureau of Transportation statistics show that freight shipments across the border were down in January, after making some recovery in late 2020. The statistics show transborder freight crossing the border between the U.S. and Canada in January was down 3.7% from December and down 4.5% from January 2020 numbers. Transborder freight by truck between the two countries was slightly up (0.1%) from December, though, and up 1.9% from January 2020, as $26.6 billion worth of freight was shipped. Loophole paying off In spite of the border closure, Canadian tourists are stimulating the economies of communities along the border, including Whatcom County. Canadians who fly in from outside the country are required to quarantine in a hotel if they fly from the U.S. into a Canadian airport, according to Travel Canada’s COVID-19 restrictions, and they are required to pay for their stay — sometimes up to $2,000. But Canadian snowbirds returning home have been getting around those restrictions by arriving in U.S. airports near the border and making the last part of the trip by land in the comfort of a limousine or taxi — some even dropping them off at their homes, according to a CBC story. “When Canada imposed that hotel [quarantine], then it was just like our phones were exploding,” Buffalo Limousine owner Carla Boccio told CBC. “What I hear from the majority of these people, it’s not even so much the cost, it’s like you’re in jail … with this hotel quarantine.” Boccio estimated here company is transporting, on average, 50 customers per day across the border. Evergreen Town Car in Bellingham, on its website and Facebook page, advertises rides across the border to their final destination in Canada, not only from Bellingham International Airport, but even from SeaTac and Everett’s Paine Field. “Yes, we’ve seen quite a few — more than we can handle,” an Evergreen representative told The Bellingham Herald. The representative said customers are quite happy with the service the company is providing and that they have picked up customers from a number of different airports in the region. https://www.bellinghamherald.com/news/coronavirus/article250737669.html ---------- wrbtrader
...“President Biden has said that we should be back to a semblance of normalcy by July 4, ..." I missed this bit of news about what Biden said. Is it true he said that? That's what the previous moron-in-chief said last year but by the Spring. So we traded one moron president for another moron president. He just fucking jinxed us.
He never said back to normal by July 4th. Instead, he a number of Americans will be vaccinated by July 4th so that they can gather in small groups to gather in their homes with others that's been vaccinated. I'm just guessing, by the end of 2021...he'll probably make some announcement after some big economic news, job growth and such about Americans getting back to normal in 2022... Just prior to the mid-term elections. Yet, this has nothing to do with Canada. ---------- .....He is also directing more doses toward some 950 community health centers and up to 20,000 retail pharmacies, to make it easier for people to get vaccinated closer to their homes. His aim: let Americans gather at least in small groups for July Fourth and “make this Independence Day truly special.”..... https://www.france24.com/en/america...ly-4-target-for-us-to-return-closer-to-normal ---------- wrbtrader
Bah. What a bollocked wimp. We needed the following from Trump last year, and Biden this year, to give the country a better feeling of hope. Just replace "aerial battle" with virus battle, and "aircraft" with health-care workers. Mreh. We need THAT guy.