Today's coronavirus news: Africa's COVID-19 envoy blasts the EU and COVAX over vaccine shortage - NiagaraFallsReview.ca

The latest coronavirus news from Canada and around the world Thursday. This file will be updated throughout the day. Web links to longer stories if available.

10:40 p.m.: British Columbia’s top doctor is encouraging people to continue wearing masks in all indoor places, even as they’re no longer mandatory starting Canada Day.

Dr. Bonnie Henry says masks remain an important layer of protection until more people have immunity from two doses of vaccine, which nearly 31 per cent of residents aged 12 and over have received.

Henry and Health Minister Adrian Dix say in a joint statement that 44 new cases of COVID-19 have been diagnosed, for a total of nearly 148,000 cases.

Of the 816 active cases, 108 people are hospitalized, and 34 of them are in intensive care.

10:15 p.m: Staff at the airport in St. John’s are getting ready for more flights and an influx of passengers as Newfoundland and Labrador’s controversial pandemic travel ban is finally set to lift.

Thursday will be the first day in nearly 14 months that Newfoundland and Labrador will welcome travellers from all over Canada without requiring they first get clearance from the government.

Health officials in Newfoundland and Labrador first introduced its so-called travel ban on May 4, 2020, which restricted access for everyone not deemed essential. Anyone wishing to visit the province had to apply for entry and if they were allowed in, most had to self-isolate for 14 days upon arrival. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association unsuccessfully challenged the ban in court after Kim Taylor, a Nova Scotia resident, was denied entry to the province to attend her mother’s funeral.

Restrictions were loosened a bit last July when the four Atlantic premiers introduced a travel bubble, allowing Atlantic Canadians to travel freely within the region without having to isolate. The Atlantic bubble, however, burst in late November when COVID-19 cases surged once again in the region.

Nova Scotia opened its boundaries to Canadian travellers on Wednesday, after New Brunswick did the same in mid-June. Prince Edward Island will open to the rest of the country on July 18.

10:05 p.m: Manitoba’s COVID-19 vaccination rate is near the top in the country and fears of a potential stall in uptake have so far not come to pass, health officials said Wednesday.

“It’s really worthy of celebration to know what we’ve all done together, to protect our loved ones and to protect our communities,” said Dr. Joss Reimer, medical lead of the province’s vaccine effort.

Provincial data showed almost 26,000 doses per day, on average, were put into arms last week — the highest number recorded during the pandemic. The number this week is forecast to be even higher.

As of Wednesday, 73 per cent of people aged 12 and over had at least one vaccine dose and 42 per cent had two shots. COVID-19 Tracker Canada, an independent, volunteer data website, said Manitoba had administered the highest number of doses per 100,000 people among the provinces. Ontario was a close second.

6:56 p.m.: COVID-19 cases have jumped by 10 per cent in the past week nationwide in the U.S. as the highly transmissible Delta variant spreads like wildfire, especially where vaccination rates are low, officials said Thursday.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said areas with low vaccination rates are quickly turning into hot spots even as the overall national picture remains very hopeful.

The Delta variant, which was first identified in India, is now responsible for 25 per cent of all new coronavirus cases in the U.S. Walensky predicted it would become the dominant strain nationally within the next several weeks at the longest.

The overall number of cases remains manageable with the seven-day average of new cases sitting around 13,000.

But that is significantly higher than a week ago as several states experience mini-outbreaks. Among the emerging hot spots are Missouri, Nevada, Arkansas, Utah and Wyoming, mostly states where conservative vaccine resistance runs strong.

Public health officials are worried that politically motivated objections to vaccination are leading to swaths of the U.S. becoming much more susceptible to a new surge of the pandemic, even as most of the country is safer than ever.

5:39 p.m.: Fully vaccinated people in Puerto Rico will no longer be required to wear face masks starting next week with few exceptions, Gov. Pedro Pierluisi announced on Thursday.

He also said that capacity restrictions at all businesses will be lifted as the number of COVID-19 cases, deaths and hospitalizations across the U.S. territory keeps dropping.

Both measures go into effect July 5.

“Each day we get closer to normal,” Pierluisi said, acknowledging that it will be difficult to determine who has been vaccinated.

Face masks, however, will still be required of everyone who visits a hospital, doctor’s office or dental clinic, Puerto Rico Health Secretary Carlos Mellado said. He added that face masks also are required for those younger than 12. The U.S. territory of 3.3 million people has reported nearly 123,000 cases and more than 2,500 deaths. Pierluisi said 74% of adults have received at least one vaccine dose, while more than 63% are fully vaccinated.

2:39 p.m.: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he’s about to get his second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Speaking to the CBC, the prime minister says he’s scheduled to get the shot on Friday.

His wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, was to get her second dose Thursday.

The Trudeaus got their first doses in late April and received the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

10 a.m.: Alberta lifted almost all its remaining COVID-19 restrictions Thursday, but many businesses said they are taking a more cautious approach as things start to return to normal.

There are no more limits on indoor and outdoor social gatherings, no more capacity limits on restaurants, stores and places of worship. Weddings and other celebrations are back on.

Alberta is also lifting its mask mandate. The exception is in Calgary, where the city has decided to revisit its mandatory mask bylaw on Monday.

Shoppers in grocery stores and diners at restaurants are free to go maskless, although it is up to individual businesses to decide how comfortable they are reverting to pre-pandemic norms.

9:30 a.m.: The buzz of full restaurants and cash registers ringing will start to become familiar again on Thursday as British Columbia largely returns to the rhythms of pre-pandemic life.

While businesses are excited about the return of customers, restaurant, retail and hotel associations say they are also hampered by staff shortages.

High COVID-19 vaccination rates and a dramatic drop in cases has led the province to enter the next phase of its reopening plan.

Residents can go to dinner indoors and outdoors without a limit on numbers, and attend fairs and festivals by following communicable disease measures, such as staying away if they’re sick. Masks will no longer be mandatory before further restrictions are removed in September.

Although masks aren’t mandatory, provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry encouraging people to continue wearing them in all indoor places.

8:38 a.m.: The number of Americans applying for unemployment aid fell again last week to the lowest level since the pandemic struck last year, further evidence that the job market and the broader economy are rebounding rapidly from the coronavirus recession.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that jobless claims dropped by 51,000 to 364,000. Applications for unemployment benefits have fallen more or less steadily since the year began. The rollout of vaccines has sharply reduced new COVID-19 cases, giving consumers the confidence to shop, travel, eat out and attend public events as the economy recovers.

All that pent-up spending has generated such demand for workers, notably at restaurants and tourism businesses, that many employers have been struggling to fill jobs just as the number of posted openings has reached a record high. But many economists expect hiring to catch up with demand in the coming months, especially as federal unemployment aid programs end and more people pursue jobs.

8:22 a.m: Ontario is allowing outdoor concerts, open-air movie screens and performing arts shows as it moves to the next stage in its reopening plan.

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Audience capacity is capped at 25 per cent of the outdoor space or seating area, with organizers required to have the maximum capacity restrictions visibly posted within the outdoor space. All tickets must be sold as reserved seats.

Other measures also allow musicians to perform at indoor concert venues for a limited number of reasons.

Live streaming shows are permitted after being outlawed by the province in April. However, the performances cannot host any spectators.

Indoor venues can hold band rehearsals with certain distancing and safety measures in place.

Restrictions have been lowered for the film and TV industry as well. In particular, a cap of 50 performers on a set is being eliminated, though studio audiences are still not allowed.

The second stage of reopening was originally slated to begin July 2, but the province moved the plan forward two days, saying COVID-19 vaccination targets have been met.

Indoor cinemas and public concerts still won’t be permitted with capacity restrictions until the third stage.

8:05 a.m.: With Ontario’s rate of first COVID-19 vaccine doses plateauing, the province’s family doctors are getting a new tool to help reach the roughly 22 per cent of adults who haven’t yet received a shot.

The “Aggregate Primary Care Vaccination Report” will be available mid-July, according to a letter from Ontario Health’s Dr. David Kaplan and Dr. Sacha Bhatia, sent last week to family physicians who enrol patients. It will provide primary care physicians with access to information about which patients have been vaccinated, when, and the type of vaccine, so they can find those falling through the cracks.

“It is really important to get these lists to us so that we can start to make those calls,” said Dr. Tara Kiran, a family physician at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.

“We can actually change people’s minds.”

But for the most part they still can’t give them the shot during their appointments. There have been pilot programs at doctors’ offices but the vaccines are not yet widely available there.

Dr. Noah Ivers, a family doctor and researcher at Women’s College Hospital who recently received a grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to study the initiative, said the new tool will be very useful, as he often gets patients asking him what he would do.

Read more from the Star’s May Warren.

7:15 a.m.: Australia has weathered the pandemic far better than many nations — recording just a single coronavirus death since last October — but its success means many Australians are not in a rush to get vaccinated and that could delay the country’s return to normalcy.

Concerns are growing about the economic cost to Australia of being left behind by countries that suffered far higher death tolls, but urgently embraced vaccines and are increasingly opening up.

Most of Australia’s pandemic success, after all, can be attributed to the continued closure of the isolated continent’s border, something that is unlikely to change until far more than the current 6% of the population is vaccinated.

But with relatively few cases of the virus and so few deaths, many in Australia are questioning whether the slight health risks to young adults of the widely available AstraZeneca vaccine make it worth it.

It’s a debate that divided politicians and medical experts this week at a time when nearly half of Australia’s 26 million people are living under lockdown measures due to the emergence of new virus clusters mostly blamed on the Delta variant, which is thought to be more contagious.

The AstraZeneca shot in Australia currently is recommended only for people older than 60 because of the risk of rare blood clotting in younger people. The only alternative registered in Australia is Pfizer, which unlike the locally made AstraZeneca is imported and in short supply.

6:50 a.m.: The African Union special envoy tasked with leading efforts to procure COVID-19 vaccines for the continent is blasting Europe as Africa struggles amid a crushing third surge of infections, saying Thursday that “not one dose, not one vial, has left a European factory for Africa.”

Strive Masiyiwa also took aim at the global effort meant to distribute vaccines to low- and middle-income countries, accusing COVAX of withholding crucial information including that key donors hadn’t met funding pledges. He didn’t name which donors.

“The situation could be very different had we known back in December that ‘Listen, this help is not coming, do for yourselves,’” Masiyiwa told reporters, adding that “many countries were just sitting back saying, ‘the vaccines are coming.’ ... We as Africans are disappointed.”

The criticism revealed African leaders’ sheer exasperation at the world’s dramatic vaccine divide, with Masiyiwa describing vaccinated, unmasked Europeans attending football matches while just 1% of Africans are fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

He stressed that Africa has purchased 400 million vaccine doses and can buy more, but he challenged donors: “Pay up your money ... We will no longer measure pledges, we will measure vaccines arriving at our airports.”

The African continent of 1.3 billion people is now in the grip of a third surge of infections that is “extremely aggressive,” the head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, John Nkengasong, told reporters. Health officials have described overflowing COVID-19 wards, dangerous oxygen shortages and a growing spread of the virus to extremely vulnerable and unequipped rural areas.

Masiyiwa said COVAX had promised to deliver 700 million vaccine doses to Africa by December. But at mid-year, Africa has received just 65 million doses overall. Less than 50 million doses via COVAX have arrived.

6:30 a.m.: The buzz of full restaurants and tills ringing will start to become familiar on Thursday as British Columbia largely returns to the rhythms of pre-pandemic life.

While businesses are excited about the return of customers, restaurant, retail and hotel associations say they are also hampered by staff shortages.

High COVID-19 vaccination rates and a dramatic drop in cases has led the province to enter the next phase of its reopening plan.

Residents can go to dinner indoors and outdoors without a limit on numbers, and attend fairs and festivals by following communicable disease measures, such as staying away if they’re sick. Masks will no longer be mandatory before further restrictions are removed in September.

Although masks aren’t mandatory, provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry encouraging people to continue wearing them in all indoor places. She said Wednesday that masks remain an important layer of protection until more people have immunity from two doses of a vaccine.

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Today's coronavirus news: Africa's COVID-19 envoy blasts the EU and COVAX over vaccine shortage - NiagaraFallsReview.ca
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