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Today’s coronavirus news: Ontario reports new record high of 1,859 COVID-19 cases; U.Ss reaches daily high of nearly 228,000 cases

Sep 27, 2021 , , , , by shlf

The latest news from Canada and around the world Saturday. This file is no longer updating. Web links to longer stories if available.

7:30 p.m.: The latest numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Canada as of 7:30 p.m. ET on Saturday Dec. 5, 2020.

There are 408,921 confirmed cases in Canada.

_ Canada: 408,921 confirmed cases (71,450 active, 324,882 resolved, 12,589 deaths).The total case count includes 13 confirmed cases among repatriated travellers.

There were 6,352 new cases Saturday from 79,671 completed tests, for a positivity rate of 8.0 per cent. Over the past seven days, there have been a total of 43,361 new cases. The seven-day rolling average of new cases is 6,194.

There were 93 new reported deaths Saturday. Over the past seven days there have been a total of 598 new reported deaths. The seven-day rolling average of new reported deaths is 85. The seven-day rolling average of the death rate is 0.23 per 100,000 people. The overall death rate is 33.49 per 100,000 people.

There have been 11,905,770 tests completed.

_ Newfoundland and Labrador: 347 confirmed cases (26 active, 317 resolved, four deaths).

There were four new cases Saturday from 247 completed tests, for a positivity rate of 1.6 per cent. Over the past seven days, there have been a total of 14 new cases. The seven-day rolling average of new cases is two.

There have been no deaths reported over the past week. The overall death rate is 0.77 per 100,000 people.

There have been 64,134 tests completed.

_ Prince Edward Island: 76 confirmed cases (eight active, 68 resolved, zero deaths).

There were three new cases Saturday from 520 completed tests, for a positivity rate of 0.58 per cent. Over the past seven days, there have been a total of four new cases. The seven-day rolling average of new cases is one.

There have been no deaths reported over the past week. The overall death rate is zero per 100,000 people.

There have been 62,566 tests completed.

_ Nova Scotia: 1,364 confirmed cases (95 active, 1,204 resolved, 65 deaths).

There were six new cases Saturday from 792 completed tests, for a positivity rate of 0.76 per cent. Over the past seven days, there have been a total of 84 new cases. The seven-day rolling average of new cases is 12.

There have been no deaths reported over the past week. The overall death rate is 6.69 per 100,000 people.

There have been 152,365 tests completed.

_ New Brunswick: 530 confirmed cases (98 active, 425 resolved, seven deaths).

There were two new cases Saturday from 448 completed tests, for a positivity rate of 0.45 per cent. Over the past seven days, there have been a total of 49 new cases. The seven-day rolling average of new cases is seven.

There have been no deaths reported over the past week. The overall death rate is 0.9 per 100,000 people.

There have been 104,966 tests completed.

_ Quebec: 149,908 confirmed cases (13,849 active, 128,828 resolved, 7,231 deaths).

There were 2,031 new cases Saturday from 11,322 completed tests, for a positivity rate of 18 per cent. Over the past seven days, there have been a total of 10,265 new cases. The seven-day rolling average of new cases is 1,466.

There were 48 new reported deaths Saturday. Over the past seven days there have been a total of 210 new reported deaths. The seven-day rolling average of new reported deaths is 30. The seven-day rolling average of the death rate is 0.35 per 100,000 people. The overall death rate is 85.22 per 100,000 people.

There have been 2,238,113 tests completed.

_ Ontario: 125,385 confirmed cases (15,212 active, 106,416 resolved, 3,757 deaths).

There were 1,859 new cases Saturday from 57,457 completed tests, for a positivity rate of 3.2 per cent. Over the past seven days, there have been a total of 12,347 new cases. The seven-day rolling average of new cases is 1,764.

There were 20 new reported deaths Saturday. Over the past seven days there have been a total of 133 new reported deaths. The seven-day rolling average of new reported deaths is 19. The seven-day rolling average of the death rate is 0.13 per 100,000 people. The overall death rate is 25.79 per 100,000 people.

There have been 6,308,784 tests completed.

_ Manitoba: 18,423 confirmed cases (9,115 active, 8,927 resolved, 381 deaths).

There were 354 new cases Saturday. Over the past seven days, there have been a total of 2,305 new cases. The seven-day rolling average of new cases is 329.

There were 19 new reported deaths Saturday. Over the past seven days there have been a total of 91 new reported deaths. The seven-day rolling average of new reported deaths is 13. The seven-day rolling average of the death rate is 0.95 per 100,000 people. The overall death rate is 27.82 per 100,000 people.

There have been 357,524 tests completed.

_ Saskatchewan: 9,730 confirmed cases (4,191 active, 5,484 resolved, 55 deaths).

There were 203 new cases Saturday from 1,962 completed tests, for a positivity rate of 10 per cent. Over the past seven days, there have been a total of 1,842 new cases. The seven-day rolling average of new cases is 263.

There were zero new reported deaths Saturday. Over the past seven days there have been a total of 10 new reported deaths. The seven-day rolling average of new reported deaths is one. The seven-day rolling average of the death rate is 0.12 per 100,000 people. The overall death rate is 4.68 per 100,000 people.

There have been 269,310 tests completed.

_ Alberta: 66,730 confirmed cases (18,806 active, 47,328 resolved, 596 deaths).

There were 1,879 new cases Saturday. Over the past seven days, there have been a total of 11,894 new cases. The seven-day rolling average of new cases is 1,699.

There were six new reported deaths Saturday. Over the past seven days there have been a total of 72 new reported deaths. The seven-day rolling average of new reported deaths is 10. The seven-day rolling average of the death rate is 0.24 per 100,000 people. The overall death rate is 13.63 per 100,000 people.

There have been 1,502,472 tests completed.

_ British Columbia: 36,132 confirmed cases (9,982 active, 25,658 resolved, 492 deaths).

There were zero new cases Saturday from 6,848 completed tests, for a positivity rate of 0.0 per cent. Over the past seven days, there have been a total of 4,498 new cases. The seven-day rolling average of new cases is 643.

There were zero new reported deaths Saturday. Over the past seven days there have been a total of 82 new reported deaths. The seven-day rolling average of new reported deaths is 12. The seven-day rolling average of the death rate is 0.23 per 100,000 people. The overall death rate is 9.7 per 100,000 people.

There have been 828,968 tests completed.

_ Yukon: 54 confirmed cases (12 active, 41 resolved, one deaths).

There were three new cases Saturday. Over the past seven days, there have been a total of nine new cases. The seven-day rolling average of new cases is one.

There have been no deaths reported over the past week. The overall death rate is 2.45 per 100,000 people.

There have been 5,522 tests completed.

_ Northwest Territories: 15 confirmed cases (zero active, 15 resolved, zero deaths).

There were zero new cases Saturday. Over the past seven days, there have been a total of zero new cases. The seven-day rolling average of new cases is zero.

There have been no deaths reported over the past week. The overall death rate is zero per 100,000 people.

There have been 6,511 tests completed.

_ Nunavut: 214 confirmed cases (56 active, 158 resolved, zero deaths).

There were eight new cases Saturday from 75 completed tests, for a positivity rate of 11 per cent. Over the past seven days, there have been a total of 50 new cases. The seven-day rolling average of new cases is seven.

There have been no deaths reported over the past week. The overall death rate is zero per 100,000 people.

There have been 4,459 tests completed.

7 p.m.: Alberta has recorded its third-straight day of more than 1,800 new COVID-19 cases. The province reported 1,879 new cases today, setting a new single-day record for the third time this week.

Six additional deaths were also reported. There are 101 people with COVID-19 in intensive care in Alberta.

6:31 p.m.: The Oregon Medical Board has indefinitely suspended the medical license of a doctor who said at a pro-Trump rally that he doesn’t wear a mask at his Dallas, Oregon, clinic and doesn’t require his staff to wear face-coverings either.

Dr. Steven LaTulippe also said at the Nov. 7 rally in Salem that he encourages others not to wear masks, according to KGW-TV.

A state order requires health care workers to wear a mask in health care settings. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say multiple studies have shown that cloth masks are effective in slowing the transmission of the coronavirus.

6:28 p.m.: Florida’s Department of Health on Saturday confirmed 10,431 additional cases of COVID-19, bringing the state’s known total to 1,049,638. This is the third consecutive day that that state has added more than 10,000 cases and tops Friday’s 10,177.

Also, 90 new resident deaths were announced, bringing the resident death toll to 19,084.

The cumulative non-resident death toll held steady at 242 deaths.

Florida has the third highest number of total confirmed cases in the country after Texas and California, according to The New York Times COVID-19 database.

6:13 p.m.: The Canadian Armed Forces says it will send a team of reservists to a First Nation in Manitoba to help with the community’s COVID-19 response.

The military says in an email that roughly six Canadian Rangers will work alongside other members of the community in Shamattawa to provide humanitarian assistance.

It says that assistance will include distributing food, firewood and care packages, as well as information and transportation.

Shamattawa Chief Eric Redhead posted online Friday that there were 117 active infections in the northern Manitoba community of about 1,100, saying they were “literally at a breaking point.”

5:57 p.m.: Coronavirus infections across the U.S. continue to rise as the country moves deeper into a holiday season when eagerly anticipated gatherings of family and friends could push the numbers even higher and overwhelm hospitals.

Vast swaths of southern and inland California imposed new restrictions on businesses and activities Saturday as hospitals in the nation’s most populous state face a dire shortage of beds. Restaurants must stop on-site dining and theatres, hair salons and many other businesses must close in the sprawling reaches of San Diego and Los Angeles, along with part of the Central Valley, including Fresno.

Five counties in the San Francisco Bay Area were set to impose their own lockdowns Sunday.

A new daily high of nearly 228,000 additional confirmed COVID-19 cases was reported nationwide Friday, eclipsing the previous high mark of 217,000 cases set the day before, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

5:17 p.m.: Faced with a dire shortage of hospital beds, health officials announced Saturday the vast region of Southern California and a large swath of the Central Valley will be placed under a sweeping new lockdown in an urgent attempt to slow the rapid rise of coronavirus cases.

The California Department of Public Health said the intensive care unit capacity in both regions’ hospitals had fallen below a 15% threshold that triggers the new measures, which include strict closures for businesses and new controls on activities. They will take effect Sunday evening and remain in place for at least three weeks, meaning the lockdown will cover the Christmas holiday.

Much of the state is on the brink of the same restrictions. Some regions have opted to impose them even before the mandate kicks in, including five San Francisco Bay Area counties where the measures also take effect starting Sunday.

4:06 p.m.: A Manitoba judge rejected a church’s request Saturday to hold drive-in services despite the province’s COVID-19 restrictions on public gatherings and in-person religious events.

“The onus that an applicant must meet to obtain a stay of legislation is extremely high,” Chief Justice Glenn Joyal of the Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench said in his rare weekend ruling.

“I do not believe that the applicants meet their burden of showing that (they) will suffer irreparable harm if the injunction is not granted.”

Joyal held a special Saturday court hearing in a case brought by Springs Church, which has faced more than $32,000 in fines for drive-in services in recent weeks and wanted a ruling before a planned service later in the day.

3:54 p.m.: All four Atlantic provinces reported new cases of COVID-19 on Saturday, but the numbers remained relatively small.

Nova Scotia reported six cases, Newfoundland and Labrador added four, New Brunswick logged two and P.E.I. recorded three, for a total of 15 across the region.

In Nova Scotia, health officials said four of the six new cases were reported in the province’s central zone, which includes Halifax.

On Friday, the province extended tighter health restrictions in the Halifax region and Hants County until Dec. 16. Those restrictions, which stop just short of a full lockdown, were introduced Nov. 24 when health officials reported 37 new cases — 35 in the Halifax area.

The other new cases reported Saturday were in Nova Scotia’s eastern zone. The province now has 95 active cases, though none of those patients were in hospital.

Premier Stephen McNeil issued a brief statement asking residents to limit their social contacts to prevent the spread of the virus, which has claimed 65 lives in Nova Scotia.

3:01 p.m.: The Fraser Health authority is changing the way it notifies people in schools about their exposures to COVID-19.

Jordan Tinney, the superintendent of the Surrey School District, says in a tweet that “significant changes” start today for informing people in a class if they have or have not been exposed.

Tinney’s notice says three different types of letters will be sent out depending on the exposure event.

In the first two exposures, the classes where a person with a positive case attended will be notified, while all others in the school will get a letter saying they were not exposed.

A third notification would be sent to the entire school if an infection is not attached to a specific class, such as if a vice-principle tested positive for COVID-19.

The Fraser Health region has been a hot spot for COVID-19 and the surging infection rates prompted tighter social restrictions there and in Vancouver Coastal Health last month, only to be expanded to the entire province days later.

2:55 p.m.: Saskatchewan is reporting 202 new COVID-19 cases today. Nearly 4,200 cases are considered active, 116 of which are in hospital and 25 of which are receiving intensive care. Provincial officials aren’t reporting any new virus-related deaths today, leaving that total at 55.

2:30 p.m.: Prince Edward Island is reporting three new cases of COVID-19 today — all of them women in their 20s who work in Charlottetown restaurants.

The province’s chief medical officer of health, Dr. Heather Morrison, says all three cases are linked as close contacts, and she confirmed that none had travelled outside the province.

Morrison says the new cluster is cause for concern, but she says it’s too early to suggest there is widespread community transmission.

The Island has reported 73 cases since the pandemic began, including 68 cases that are now considered recovered.

1:45 p.m.: Manitoba has recorded a new daily record in the number of COVID-19-related deaths, with officials there saying 19 people have recently died as a result of the virus.

Among the deaths is a woman in her 20s in the Winnipeg health region. The province is reporting 354 new cases of COVID-19 in the province as of 9:30 a.m. today. So far, 381 people have died from COVID-19 across the province.

1:25 p.m.: Newfoundland and Labrador is reporting four new cases of COVID-19 today — all of them women under the age of 50.

Two of those cases are young women from the same household in eastern Newfoundland, where a previous travel-related case was reported.

The third case is a woman in her 40s from outside the province who came to eastern Newfoundland from Alberta after she was granted a travel exemption.

The fourth case is a woman under the age of 40 in the central zone whose infection is under investigation.

As of today, Newfoundland and Labrador had 26 active cases of COVID-19

1 p.m. Coronavirus infections continue to spread at record levels in the United States, reaching a new daily high of nearly 228,000 cases on Friday.

The 227,885 cases eclipses the previous high of more than 217,000 on Thursday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

The seven-day rolling average of COVID-19 attributable deaths in the U.S. has passed 2,000 for the first time since the spring. It reached 2,011 on Friday. Two weeks ago, the seven-day average was 1,448. There were 2,607 deaths reported in the U.S. on Friday.

Globally, Johns Hopkins reports more than 1.5 million people have died from the coronavirus pandemic, including more than 279,000 in the United States.

11:50 a.m. Health officials in New Brunswick are reporting two new cases of COVID-19 today.

The first case involves a person in their 50s in the Saint John region, and the second case is a person in their 40s in the Edmundston region of northwestern New Brunswick.

There are now 98 active cases in the province, with one patient recovering in an intensive care unit.

The number of confirmed cases in New Brunswick is 530, which includes seven deaths and 425 recoveries.

10:31 a.m. On Saturday, Ontario reported a new record high of 1,859 cases of COVID-19 with about 59,400 tests completed, along with 20 new deaths linked to the virus. The new cases reported include 504 in Toronto, 463 in Peel and 198 in York Region.

There are 1,624 more resolved cases, while the number of active cases sits at 15,212.

The number of patients in the province’s hospitals stands at 709, with 202 in intensive care.

Elliott says the province has “reached a critical point” in the spread of the virus and is once again urging residents to wear masks and follow public health advice.

9:30 a.m. India has registered 36,652 confirmed coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours.

India’s health ministry on Saturday also recorded 512 deaths in the past 24 hours, taking total deaths to nearly 140,000. The pace of new cases has seen a downward trend, with single-day cases remaining below the 50,000 mark a month.

India has 9.6 million total cases, second behind the U.S. with 14.3 million. But globally it has one of the lowest deaths per million population, according to the Health Ministry.

8 a.m. Millions of students across the province are in the midst of a . COVID-19 forced the sudden shutdown of schools after March Break, and when classes resumed weeks later, everyone was forced to pivot to online with little preparation and no training. It wasn’t pretty.

The start of the school year in September wasn’t much better. With no direction from the Ministry of Education until late summer, boards were left scrambling to make in-person schools safe and build virtual schools from scratch.

The result was chaos. Face-to-face classes were not physically distanced; classrooms lacked proper ventilation; teachers protested a lack of protective gear. Within days, schools were hit with COVID-19 outbreaks; to date, 776 of Ontario’s public schools have had cases, resulting in kids or full classes being sent home. Meanwhile, virtual school, unprepared for the demand, was beset by technology challenges, a delayed start and a seemingly endless shuffling of students and teachers.

Together with the Ontario teachers strikes at the beginning of 2020, these disrupted school days have added up, leaving some to wonder how things are going for the millions of children in the province’s schools: Are our kids even learning? Is this a “lost year?” Who will be left behind when the dust settles?

7:45 a.m. For Empire Co. CEO Michael Medline, the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic were a flurry of meetings as he and his team scrambled to fulfil the grocery brand’s new role as an essential service.

This included making Sobeys the first grocery store to implement Canada-wide Plexiglas checkout shields, beginning with an order Medline sent out before he’d even hung up his call with the Italian grocery chain CEO who pioneered the technique.

Faced with too many unknowns and not enough data, Medline said the crisis forced the team to cut the picture down to their core goals.

“Everything went back to three things,” Medline said. “Keep our customers and teammates safe, stock those shelves, and support local communities … especially charitable causes (that) continue to be in trouble.”

That attitude sounds similar to what any corporate leader would say about getting through the pandemic.

What makes Medline stand out nine months in, is his continued willingness to back up that rhetoric with both money and action. He has reinstated hazard bonuses for front-line workers, maintained his commitment to Sobeys’ charity events and declined to raise fees on Empire’s food suppliers, even when that meant breaking stride with major competitors in the grocery industry.

7:22 a.m. Procurement Minister Anita Anand says that as soon as she knows when the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine will arrive in Canada, she will share that information with Canadians.

But Anand told The Canadian Press in an interview this week that the original contracts to buy COVID-19 vaccines had to be vague about delivery dates because nobody knew at the time if the vaccines would be successful.

It’s only in the last few weeks, when the leading candidates from Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca reported such positive results from their large clinical trials, that the way forward became clear enough for Anand’s department to start asking the companies to be more specific about when they can make good on their contracts with Canada.

“We put these contracts in place in order to place Canadians in the best stead possible, of any country in the world, recognizing that we would need to negotiate additional terms such as precise delivery dates, once a vaccine was discovered, and regulatory approval was obtained,” she said. “And that is what’s happening now.”

7:20 a.m. Much of California is on the brink of sweeping new restrictions on businesses and activities, a desperate attempt to slow the frighteningly rapid escalation of coronavirus cases that threatens to overwhelm hospitals.

Five San Francisco Bay Area counties imposed a new stay-at-home order for their residents that will take effect Sunday. Southern California and a large swath of the central portion of the state could join this weekend.

Those two regions have seen their intensive care unit capacity fall below the 15% threshold that under a new state stay-at-home order will trigger new restrictions barring all on-site restaurant dining and close hair and nail salons, movie theatres and many other businesses, as well as museums and playgrounds.

If their capacity remains below that level when the data is updated Saturday, the closures will take effect Sunday and stay in effect at least three weeks.

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the new plan Thursday. It is the most restrictive order since he imposed the country’s first statewide stay-at-home rule in March.

7:07 a.m. Thousands of doctors, teachers and others in high-risk groups have signed up for COVID-19 vaccinations in Moscow starting Saturday, a precursor to a sweeping Russia-wide immunization effort.

The vaccinations come three days after President Vladimir Putin ordered the launch of a “large-scale” COVID-19 immunization campaign even though a Russian-designed vaccine has yet to complete the advanced studies needed to ensure its effectiveness and safety in line with established scientific protocols.

The Russian leader said Wednesday that more than 2 million doses of the Sputnik V jab will be available in the next few days, allowing authorities to offer jabs to medical workers and teachers across the country starting late next week.

Moscow, which currently accounts for about a quarter of the country’s new daily infections, moved ahead of the curve, opening 70 vaccination facilities on Saturday. Doctors, teachers and municipal workers were invited to book a time to receive a jab, and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said that about 5,000 signed up in a few hours after the system began operating on Friday.

7 a.m. Iran’s death toll from the global pandemic has risen above 50,000, according to state television, as the country grapples with the worst outbreak in the Middle East.

A two-week partial lockdown in the capital of Tehran and other major cities helped slow, but not stop the rising wave of deaths from the coronavirus over the past few weeks.

President Hassan Rouhani warned Saturday that the lockdown could be extended to more cities or reimposed on the capital, if people do not abide by health measures.

“Tehran is on the borderline of being in the red zone,” Rouhani said. “All people and public officials should try to implement measures and regulations.”

Health Ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari said Saturday that the countrywide death toll the previous day was 321.

Friday 6 p.m. The FBI is telling anyone who underwent a coronavirus test at a New Jersey laboratory to get retested and to contact the agency.

In a statement Friday on Twitter, the FBI’s Newark office urges people who were recently tested for the virus at Infinity Diagnostic Laboratory in Ventnor “to be retested as soon as possible.” It also asks that anyone who was administered a finger-prick blood test at the laboratory to contact a victim assistance unit at the FBI.

The announcement gave no further details, and a message left with the FBI seeking further information was not immediately returned.

Voicemail for the company’s operations director Friday evening said it was closed and did not offer the opportunity to leave a message.

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Requests for mental health services in Toronto reached a pandemic peak at the end of September

Sep 21, 2021 , , , , by shlf

Requests for mental health services in Toronto have increased over the course of the pandemic, reaching their highest peak to date in the last week of September. But some seeking mental health support aren’t being connected to the services they need, new data shows.

Calls for mental health services through 2-1-1, a national public line that connects people with social services in their area like food agencies, housing assistance and health supports, have spiked in Toronto as cases increased in the city and surrounding areas, with callers requesting services for anxiety, loneliness and addiction supports.

Now, with the Canada Emergency Response Benefit ending as of Oct. 3 and children returning to school, 2-1-1 is experiencing its highest volume of mental health-related phone calls yet since April.

When COVID-19 cases began to slightly decline at the end of April, 2-1-1 received 157 mental health-related calls for services. Between Sept. 20 and Sept. 26 — when reports of a second wave of cases were beginning to emerge in Ontario — the number of calls was 249.

Carrie Moody, director of strategic solutions at 211 Ontario, said it’s difficult to determine concrete trends in the data as the pandemic is still ongoing, but she said many of the recent mental health calls have been related to anxieties about children returning to school, as well as CERB ending. The benefit has financially helped 8.5 million Canadians who lost their income as a result of the pandemic.

“There’s also just fear about going inside and the summer being over,” Moody added, compounded with the number of COVID-19 cases going up significantly as the city inches closer to the winter months.

A worrying trend, however, is that mental health-related calls in Toronto have accounted for the highest percentage of unmet needs through 2-1-1, meaning many who are calling for services aren’t receiving them.

Moody said requests for mental health services account for 74 per cent of the total unmet needs of callers. An overwhelming majority of those callers — 93 per cent — are looking for addictions and substance use services, but weren’t connected to the help they needed.

“There’s not enough detox centres in the city,” Moody said. Operators try to offer them other types of supports and continue to call back until the detox services they’re seeking become available.

Throughout the pandemic, around 55 per cent of people who called for mental health-related concerns were seeking assessment or treatment, and half of those callers were seeking some type of crisis intervention. The second-most requested service, however, is help for substance use disorders, which make up about 25 per cent of total mental health-related calls since the pandemic began in Toronto.

The data provided to the Star by 2-1-1 also shows that 9.6 per cent of calls province-wide were related to mental health. But in Toronto, the percentage of calls for mental health services jumps to 25 per cent.

Over the course of the pandemic, Moody said the majority of mental health-related calls in Toronto were coming from women and seniors. Seniors in particular were suffering with loneliness and feelings of depression when lockdown began earlier in the spring. Some were struggling without their personal support workers and the transition to online services.

Around May and June, 2-1-1 began fielding calls from people talking about their own experiences of racism, past trauma and violence. Moody said this coincided with the rise in anti-racism protests that coincided with the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis earlier this summer.

“We were getting some calls from people who were triggered and were thinking about issues that had happened to them in the past, and just were looking for someone who would listen to them talk about their experiences,” Moody said.

People who are calling about discrimination or racism-based trauma would often get referred to agencies like Across Boundaries, a local mental health and addictions service centre that provides anti-racism support and serves Toronto’s racialized communities.

Other callers were referred to agencies like the Gerstein Centre, Progress Place and the Distress Centres of Greater Toronto.

The City of Toronto announced a partnership with the city’s mental health supports through 2-1-1 at the beginning of April to streamline connections between people and the help they seek, due to an anticipated increase in demand for services as pandemic-related struggles continue. The service is also funded with the help of United Way Greater Toronto, Moody said.

While the demand for help is at a peak, Moody said 2-1-1 is well equipped to field calls from the community should the number of calls become even higher. But her worry, she said, lies with the communities who are experiencing significant struggles that are compounded by the pandemic — many of whom from lower-income and racialized backgrounds.

“I do think that over the next little while, we’re going to see significant increases in mental health calls,” Moody said. “I worry about those people who aren’t connected to services.”

Nadine Yousif is a Toronto-based reporter for the Star covering mental health. Her reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative. Follow her on Twitter:

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People 60 and older make up 96% of COVID-19 deaths in Ontario. Here’s why one advocate calls it ‘ageism in action’

Sep 15, 2021 , , , , by shlf

As wave two of the rages on, people 60 and older — a group disproportionately represented in Ontario deaths — are looking for more supports to avoid becoming infected, one advocate says.

According to the province’s daily epidemiological report, 3,298 people 60 and older have died as of Nov. 19, accounting for 96 per cent of the province’s total deaths. Of those deaths, 2,193 were residing in long-term-care homes.

Of the 3,298 deaths, 904 were people between the ages of 60 and 79, and 2,394 were 80 and older.

Though COVID-19 has had a on those living in long-term care, the virus’s wide reach is also being felt by those who reside in the community.

About 92 per cent of people 60 and older live in the community rather than congregate settings in Canada, said Laura Tamblyn Watts, CEO of CanAge, a national advocacy organization that “educates, empowers and mobilizes people on the issues that matter most to older Canadians.”

Tamblyn Watts says the concerns are around community transmission to people 60 and older as they go about their daily tasks.

“I think what we’re seeing is ageism in action, that there’s been a sense that it’s all right that seniors die of COVID-19,” Tamblyn Watts said.

The more often people in this demographic need to enter the community, the more likely those at high risk have to make the “really terrible choice” between getting things they need or staying home and avoiding outside contacts she said.

“Older people in the second wave may have fewer supports as people get more used to living with COVID-19. So they have to go into the community in many cases to do things like grocery shopping and getting medication.”

Community support is a must if seniors are to stay protected, Tamblyn Watts said.

“Whether it’s an increased support for grocery delivery, whether it’s extra community-based wellness checks, whether it’s making sure that we support … care at home as opposed to home care, older people need to get care in the place that they are and not be exposed to the broader community spread wherever possible.”

She pointed to podiatry, physiotherapy, nursing services and dialysis as procedures that could be broadly supported for people at home instead of requiring folks to leave their homes for treatment.

There needs to “less hand-wringing, less professions of hearts breaking, and more action in the way that will make the lives of seniors better and safer,” Tamblyn Watts said.

Tanya McKay, 83, said that the threat of becoming infected by COVID-19 has meant she has lost a lot of the joys she found pre-pandemic alongside her husband, Nelson.

“Much of the fun has gone from our lives. We were always socially active, loved to travel, loved to entertain friends, loved to attend cultural events such as concerts and plays,” McKay, who lives in Niagara Falls, told the Star. “All this has been suspended.”

The pandemic has put a damper on any motivation in day-to-day life, McKay said. “We have more time and yet seem to accomplish less. We have to push ourselves mentally. Sometimes we feel ‘why bother?’” she said.

She realizes the privilege she and Nelson enjoy: while there is an element of fear and disruption, “we are very fortunate compared to many others as we live in a house with a backyard in a small city with easy access to lovely countryside,” McKay said. “We are both healthy and have never had many worries.”

Jenna Moon is a breaking news reporter for the Star and is based in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter:

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Canada’s top doctors say the science of COVID-19 is clear — but how to act on it is up to politicians

Sep 2, 2021 , , , , by shlf

OTTAWA – Canada’s top public health officers say medical and public health experts agree on the science and how to stem the growing COVID-19 tide, but it’s up to “political masters” to act on that information.

Chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam avoided directly criticizing the Ontario government after the Star reported Premier Doug Ford’s government ignored its own expert advice on when to impose new pandemic restrictions.

But she said all medical officers of health have reached a consensus on the course of action that’s needed, issued clear advice, and are warning that Canadians must further limit their contacts.

Modelling shows that Canada could hit 10,000 daily new cases by the beginning of December if nothing changes, she warned.

“Fires are burning in so many different areas” outside the Atlantic bubble, Tam told reporters.

Deputy public health officer Dr. Howard Njoo warned the epidemic’s second wave could swamp the health-care system, given the current rate of hospitalizations and deaths.

He went further than Tam regarding Ontario’s actions, laying responsibility clearly at the feet of the premier and his ministers.

“Speaking for myself personally, as a public health physician and expert, our job really is to look at the evidence, the science, and do the analysis, the interpretation and then give our best advice and recommendations to our political masters,” Njoo said.

“At the end of the day, I think we recognize the elected officials are the ones that make the final decisions.”

Two hours later, Ford changed course and imposed tougher benchmarks than announced just this week for when new restrictions would be imposed in Ontario.

The Star reported this week the chief health protection officer at the province’s public health agency had urged the Ford government to set the threshold for action in the fourth colour-coded stage — known as red or “control” (one short of a lockdown) — four times lower than the government announced last week.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declined to express his view of the Ford government’s actions.

The federal government’s job is to support the provinces, he said, and Ottawa will do “whatever it takes” to support Canadians in the health crisis.

He said it is best if “we move quickly, firmly” to impose restrictions where warranted.

Tam’s warning that Canada might hit 10,000 daily cases within weeks “should be a wake-up call for everyone,” Trudeau said.

Ottawa has provided more than $21 billion directly to provinces since the spring for health, school and business measures to allow them to fight the pandemic.

Trudeau, who has consistently rejected declaring a national emergency, said the “optimal thing” would be for everyone to work together, to take the right measures.

“I think it’s important to remember that we’re in a federation where the federal government is not higher than or more important than provincial governments,” he said.

”We work as partners together. The provinces expressed a need for these supports and we delivered these supports … and we will continue to.”

Trudeau said questions about whether the provinces are spending the federal money on the right things are “quite appropriately to be asked by citizens in the provinces and organizations in the provinces of their provincial leaders.”

But Trudeau said he warned premiers on a conference call Thursday night that the federal government’s resources are “not infinite.”

He later clarified he meant resources like the provisions of personal protective equipment, people to do contact tracing, and Canadian Red Cross and Canadian Armed Forces personnel.

Still, the dichotomy between political views and the views of medical experts was on full view in the prime minister’s own news conference when Trudeau left open the possibility for family gatherings during the holidays.

“We need to hang in there a number more months,” Trudeau told reporters, adding what Canadians do in the “days to come will determine what we get to do” at Christmas.

Tam offered a dimmer view.

“Right now it’s not looking good,” she said.

“Given the projection that we have now, which is we could get to 10,000 cases by the beginning of December if we didn’t cut down on our contact and drastically flatten this curve now, I think it’s very unlikely that by the holiday season – I don’t think anyone’s advocating parties.

“This is not going to be a normal Christmas, but you can have a safe and a fun Christmas that includes social connection if you do it safely.”

Thanksgiving and Halloween celebrations offer a “cautionary tale” because despite warnings against holding parties, private get-togethers “may have increased acceleration in a number of areas in Canada,” Tam said.

“That cannot be done. Right now, that is not recommended.”

Again, Njoo was clearer: “I don’t foresee gatherings of large families, perhaps only those in the same household,” he said. “We may need to limit even more, have only some members of the family for a visit.

“Every Canadian has to perhaps look in the mirror and ask, ‘What can I do today?’”

Tonda MacCharles is an Ottawa-based reporter covering federal politics for the Star. Follow her on Twitter:

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Restaurants and gyms reopening in York, Peel, Ottawa Nov. 7

Sep 1, 2021 , , , , by shlf

Indoor dining and gyms will be reopening in York, Peel and Ottawa this week, as part of the new COVID-19 guidelines released by the Ontario government today. Toronto will follow shortly. 

The new system, announced Nov. 3, will track the trends of Ontario’s regional health units and rank them by a series of five colour-coded categories, in an effort to provide ongoing transparency as to where each region stands.

As of Nov. 7, York, Peel and Ottawa will be moving out of modified Stage 2 and into what is now called the “restrict level,” or “orange level,” which means indoor dining can resume and gyms and theatres can reopen — but with additional protective measures such as no alcohol served after 9 p.m. and three-metres of distance between people exercising, up from two metres.

As well, Eastern Ontario will be moving into restrict level, as a preventative measure. Brant, Durham, Halton and Hamilton will be entering the “protect level,” also know as the “yellow level.”

Toronto will be joining the four regions at the restrict level on Nov. 14, as per the request of Toronto Mayor John Tory and Toronto’s medical officer of health Eileen de Villa, Premier Doug Ford said. 

The rest of the Ontario regions will remain at the “green” or “prevent level,” until further notice. The data will be reviewed and updated on a weekly basis.

“It’s clear COVID-19 will be with us for a while, which is why we are putting in place a framework that will protect the health and safety of individuals and families, while avoiding broader closures across the province,” Ford added. 

“This framework, developed in consultation with our health experts, will serve as an early warning system allowing us to scale up and scale back public health restrictions on a regional or community basis in response to surges and waves of COVID-19.

Here is a breakdown of the levels: 

Green (Prevent): State similar to Stage 3, with certain high-risk locations remaining closed.

Yellow (Protect): Increased enforcement and fines for those not following the guidelines.

Orange (Restrict): Enhanced restrictions in an effort to prevent further closures.

Red (Control): Return to modified Stage 2, with further restrictions and the closure of some businesses or organizations.

Gray (Lockdown): A return to a modified Stage 1 and a declaration of emergency will be considered.

With files from Rob Ferguson

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‘The hearing went on without us’: Legal clinics warn that emailed eviction hearing notices aren’t reaching tenants

Aug 27, 2021 , , , , by shlf

When Angelica Donato was first notified about an eviction hearing against her at Ontario’s Landlord and Tenant Board, the notice was delivered by mail, for a date this summer that was eventually postponed during the province’s COVID-era eviction halt.

But when the case was rescheduled for a virtual hearing in early September, Donato said that notice never arrived — claiming it was delivered by email to a misspelled address.

Although her landlord appeared before the tribunal, Donato said she only learned about the new hearing date after an eviction was granted.

“The hearing went on without us,” she said. And Donato isn’t alone.

In recent weeks, legal clinics across the province have been sounding alarms about the shift to digital operations by the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) during the pandemic — including problems with hearing notices being sent by email.

“It’s not just the tenants that are saying they didn’t get notice,” said Julius Mlynarski, director of South Etobicoke Community Legal Services, who is helping Donato.

“We are not getting notice … we’re not sitting there lying about it, or trying to make up excuses,” he said. At his clinic alone, there have been two cases in recent weeks. From colleagues at other clinics, he’s been told of nearly 15 cases in mid-to-late October.

Since Ontario’s eviction moratorium lifted at the end of July, the board has been working through its backlog of pre-pandemic cases. But they’ve started to cross that threshold recently, with Tribunals Ontario confirming late last month that they were scheduling LTB hearings before the end of December in cases where landlords applied to evict their tenants in March.

While Premier Doug Ford pledged that no one would lose their home for missing rent during COVID-19, the board processed 668 applications to evict tenants for unpaid rent from March 17 to 31; 1,407 applications in April; 1,711 in May; 1,415 in June and 1,414 in July — plus 1,708 in August, after the moratorium ended. Those applications aren’t guaranteed to result in eviction orders, but are the first step in that process.

Dozens of legal clinics across the province recently endorsed a report laying out issues with the LTB’s current operations. It calls on the board to stop relying on email to deliver notices of hearings — unless it’s specifically requested and all contact information is confirmed to be correct — and to halt any proceedings where one party doesn’t show up, unless the board could be satisfied that the missing person knew their hearing was happening and had reliable means to access it.

“These are legal proceedings,” said Yodit Edemariam, director of legal services at the Rexdale Community Legal Clinic. “People have a fundamental right in a society to access those proceedings, to defend themselves and to participate fully.”

In addition to missing notices, Edemariam said there were cases where people were getting their notices shortly before a hearing was due to take place, which jeopardized their ability to seek legal advice or submit evidence to the board.

A missed, or nearly missed, notice could be as simple as an email landing in a junk filter, said Andrew Hwang, supervisory duty council with the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario. But the consequences could be severe, if tenants were facing evictions during the pandemic, said Edemariam.

As for Donato, she’s currently waiting for a review hearing, and pursuing a motion to void the eviction order because the money she owed at the time of the hearing was paid off — through the Toronto Housing Stabilization Fund, which she qualified for as a social assistance recipient.

Her landlord, Charles Gerditschke, said that Donato should have known about the hearing whether she received her formal notice of hearing or not, because he provided his evidence to her.

In response to an inquiry from the Star about missed or nearly missed hearing notices, Tribunals Ontario said it sends a notice of hearing by regular mail to all parties two to three weeks before a hearing, and by email in cases where they have addresses on file.

Asked about Donato’s case, the agency did not comment on whether her notice was sent to a misspelled address, but said anyone who didn’t receive their notice “may wish to contact their local regional office” to request a copy or ask about their next steps.

The recent report endorsed by the group of legal clinics called on the LTB to use courier instead of mail or email for notices of hearings, orders and other time-sensitive documents, claiming that mail delivery in many Ontario communities had been “significantly delayed.”

Each time someone missed their notice of hearing, Mlynarski said, it triggered reviews, and potentially new hearings — which he argued was contrary to efforts to work through the board’s backlog efficiently.

Even if emailing the notices meant working faster, Edemariam urged other priorities to prevail: “Efficiency can not come at the expense of real access to justice.”

Victoria Gibson is a Toronto-based reporter for the Star covering affordable housing. Her reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative. Reach her via email:

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Today’s coronavirus news: Trump chief of staff Meadows diagnosed with COVID-19; Ontario reporting 1,003 cases, 85 new cases in schools

Aug 27, 2021 , , , , by shlf

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

11:23 p.m. President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows has been diagnosed with the coronavirus as the nation sets daily records for confirmed cases for the pandemic.

Two senior administration officials confirmed Friday that Meadows had tested positive for the virus, which has killed more than 236,000 Americans so far this year.

Meadows travelled with Trump in the run-up to Election Day and last appeared in public early Wednesday morning without a mask as Trump falsely declared victory in the vote count. He had been one of the close aides around Trump when the president came down with the virus more than a month ago, but was tested daily and maintained his regular work schedule.

7:21 p.m.: The Ontario Real Estate Association (OREA) says agents are now permitted to hold open houses in regions that have been designated “green-prevent,” “yellow-protect” and “orange-restrict” under the new Provincial COVID-19 framework.

That means agents in York Region and Ottawa can resume that practice on Saturday and in Toronto, on Nov. 14

Under the new system, announced by the Province this week, open houses are not permitted in the “red-control” and lockdown categories.

The Province announced on Friday that Peel Region will be designated “red” on Saturday due to high rates of infection.

The association and the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board are continuing to advise realtors to avoid open houses and use virtual selling tools whenever possible. In-person showings are allowed by appointment for qualified clients as long as public health guidelines are followed.

3:53 p.m: There have been 253,805 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Canada, including 10,425 deaths, and 210,145 that have been resolved, according to The Canadian Press.

This breaks down as follows (NOTE: The Star does its own count for Ontario; see elsewhere this file.):

  • Quebec: 112,189 confirmed (including 6,403 deaths, 95,956 resolved)
  • Ontario: 81,693 confirmed (including 3,209 deaths, 70,086 resolved)
  • Alberta: 30,447 confirmed (including 343 deaths, 23,874 resolved)
  • British Columbia: 16,560 confirmed (including 273 deaths, 12,806 resolved)
  • Manitoba: 7,419 confirmed (including 96 deaths, 3,037 resolved)
  • Saskatchewan: 3,623 confirmed (including 25 deaths, 2,634 resolved)
  • Nova Scotia: 1,121 confirmed (including 65 deaths, 1,040 resolved)
  • New Brunswick: 350 confirmed (including six deaths, 320 resolved)
  • Newfoundland and Labrador: 292 confirmed (including four deaths, 285 resolved)
  • Prince Edward Island: 64 confirmed, all of which have been resolved
  • Yukon: 23 confirmed (including one death, 20 resolved)
  • Repatriated Canadians account for 13 confirmed cases, all of which have been resolved
  • Northwest Territories: 10 confirmed, all of which have been resolved
  • Nunavut reports one confirmed case.

3 p.m. Nova Scotia is reporting two new cases of COVID-19.

There are now 16 active cases of novel coronavirus in the province.

Health officials say the new cases are in the central health zone, with one a close contact of a case reported Thursday and the other under investigation.

There has been a total of 1,121 positive cases, with 1,040 cases now resolved, and there have been 65 deaths.

2:30 p.m. When a vaccine is available, who should get it first?

It’s a question bioethicists, epidemiologists and public health experts are wrestling with now, even as a safe and effective vaccine remains an uncertain goal.

Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, she is “cautiously optimistic” a safe and effective vaccine will be available in the “first quarter of 2021.”

Whenever it arrives, there is a presumption that demand for the vaccine will initially outstrip supply, so governments will have to develop a clear plan for who should be prioritized.

On Tuesday, Canada’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization , identifying four key groups for prioritization: 1) those at high risk of severe illness or death, including older people and people with high-risk conditions; 2) people most likely to transmit the virus to those who are high risk, including front-line health-care workers; 3) essential workers who can’t do their jobs from home; and 4) others whose living and working conditions put them at elevated risk of infection and where infection could have “disproportionate” consequences.

The guidelines, which are non-binding and meant to advise regional public health officials, are necessarily vague given the uncertainty around a potential vaccine and how scarce initial doses might be.

Read the full story from the Star’s Brendan Kennedy:

2:16 p.m. The Manitoba government is increasing restrictions in the southern health region as COVID-19 numbers continue to climb.

The region is being moved to the red, or critical, code on the province’s pandemic response scale, which means restaurants and bars must close except for takeout and delivery.

Capacity limits for religious services and other gatherings are being lowered as well.

Similar restrictions were ordered in the greater Winnipeg region recently in an attempt to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Health officials are reporting 242 new cases across the province and five additional deaths.

Chief public health officer, Dr. Brent Roussin, says people should stay home as much as possible, and should not be socializing with anyone outside their households.

2:07 p.m Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says some COVID-19 vaccine candidates expected in the new year will pose significant logistical and distribution challenges.

Trudeau says he hopes a viable vaccine will be available to Canadians in the spring but notes some of theinitial doseswill require “extremely high degrees of logistical support” such as freezers that can keep the vaccines at -80 degrees C.

He says those conditions don’t make it easy for mass distribution to pharmacies across the country, but that other vaccines expected to arrive later may be easier to handle.

Trudeau says Canada will require “a very sophisticated plan” to be able to roll out vaccines in “the right way” and “to the right people.”

Earlier this week the National Advisory Committee on Immunization outlined four key groups that should be prioritized for the COVID-19 vaccine.

Trudeau says those include populations with “a high degree of vulnerability,” such as Indigenous peoples and frontline health workers.

(UPDATED) 1:40 p.m. High numbers of COVID-19 in Peel Region — particularly in Brampton — are keeping it in Ontario’s red or “control” zone of restrictions, but some indoor dining can resume and gyms reopen while movie theatres must remain closed under Ontario’s new framework.

Peel had been slated for a larger easing of public health measures along with York Region and Ottawa on Saturday until a sudden increase in pandemic indicators started “going through the roof,” Premier Doug Ford said Friday.

Despite that spike, restaurants in Peel “can still have customers come in” to a maximum of 10 indoors at any one time with no more than four diners per table, Ford told his daily news conference. Strip clubs must remain

Peel, York, Ottawa and Toronto have been in the previous system of modified Stage 2 restrictions with a ban on indoor dining and closures of gyms and theatres since mid-October.

Read the full story from the Star’s Rob Ferguson:

1:25 p.m. Saskatchewan’s Opposition leader says Premier Scott Moe is pandering to those in the province resistant to additional measures to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Ryan Meili suggests Moe saw the trend of rising cases during the provincial election campaign but decided to wait until after the Oct. 26 vote to take action.

Starting today, masks must be worn in indoor public spaces in Regina, Saskatoon and Prince Albert ——cities where a majority of the new spread is happening.

The maximum limit for people allowed to gather inside a home has dropped to 10 from 15.

The province set a new record Thursday for cases in a single day with 129 new infections.

1:20 p.m. Nunavut’s chief public health officer has confirmed the .

Michael Patterson says in a news release that the confirmed case is in the Hudson Bay community of Sanikiluaq, where about 850 people live

Patterson says his department has started contact tracing and a rapid response team has been sent to the community.

Patterson says to contain a potential spread, all Sanikiluaq residents should remain at home and limit contact with others, including family members not living in the same household.

The release says the individual is in isolation along with family and all are doing well.

All travel to and from Sanikiluaq is restricted, with the exception of cargo shipments and emergency travel.

Grocery stores will operate at reduced hours and shoppers are required to wear masks.

12:20 p.m. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the strain of surging COVID-19 case numbers should make us think of loved ones and relatives we all must protect.

Trudeau says he’s thinking of his godfather and uncle Tom Walker, who has been in and out of hospital and had to be readmitted last night.

He says “this situation is serious” and now is not the time to let our guard down.

He notes increasing evidence that aerosol spread is a vector of transmission and that winter weather will soon force many Canadians indoors into less well-ventilated areas.

He says we must do everything we can now to reduce outbreaks.

12:15 p.m. Public health officials in New Brunswick have reported one new case of COVID-19 today.

The case was found in the Campbellton region in north New Brunswick and the person is currently self-isolating.

The newest case brings the province’s total number of active cases to 24.

The Campbellton region moved back into the yellow stage of recovery today after a downward trend in the number of cases and infection risk, according to public health authorities.

11:45 a.m. The federal government is promising another $155 million in aid for high-tech and research-oriented companies that generally don’t qualify for the federal pandemic wage subsidy.

The wage-subsidy program requires companies looking for support to show that their revenues have shrunk in the COVID-19 pandemic, so it leaves out firms that don’t have revenue because they’re still working on bringing products to market.

The new money is being offered through what’s called the Innovation Assistance Program, which was boosted with $250 million in April once the government recognized the gap in the wage-subsidy program.

11:58 a.m. A Quebec public health institute in says it doesn’t expect the number of new COVID-19 cases in the province to exceed the capacity of the province’s hospital over the next four weeks.

The National Institute of Excellence in Health and Social Services says it is worried, however, that the situation outside of the Montreal area could change.

Meanwhile, two people are dead and 39 people are in hospital due to an outbreak of COVID-19 at a private seniors residence in the Gaspe region, northeast of Quebec City.

11:30 a.m. Quebec is reporting 1,133 new cases of COVID-19 today and 25 additional deaths associated with the novel coronavirus.

Provincial health authorities say 539 people are currently in hospital, an increase of one from the previous day, and of those 77 are in intensive care, a decline of five from the previous day.

The Health Department says 28,807 tests were done on Nov. 4, the most recent date for which data is available, the highest number of tests done in a single day in the province in more than a week.

There have now been a total of 112,189 confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported in Quebec and 6,403 deaths associated with the novel coronavirus.

11:25 a.m. The federal Indigenous Services Department says there were 254 new cases of COVID-19 in Indigenous communities in the last week of October.

At last count, there were 542 active cases on First Nations.

The department says the increase is mostly attributable to large gatherings in both public and private places, where participants didn’t wear masks or stay a safe distance apart.

One large group event in Saskatchewan led to 11 separate outbreaks in the province.

The government says it’s working particularly closely with First Nations and the provincial government in Manitoba to try to get outbreaks there under control.

11 a.m. Ontario is reporting an additional 85 new cases in public schools across the province, bringing the total in the last two weeks to 914 and 2,628 overall since school began.

, the province reported 49 more students were infected for a total of 525 in the last two weeks; since school began there have been an overall total of 1,484.

The data shows there are eight more staff members infected for a total of 81 in the last two weeks — and an overall total of 328. The latest report also shows 28 more infected individuals who weren’t identified for a total of 308 in that category in the last two weeks — and an overall total of 816.

There are 582 schools with a reported case, which the province notes is 12 per cent of the 4,828 public schools in Ontario.

One school is closed because of an outbreak.

Elder’s Mills Public School, a French-immersion elementary school in Woodbridge, of COVID-19. The school is set to reopen on Nov. 11.

There is a lag between the daily provincial data at 10:30 a.m. and news reports about infections in schools. The provincial data on Thursday is current as of 2 p.m. Wednesday. It also doesn’t indicate where the place of transmission occurred.

The Toronto District School Board updates its information on current COVID-19 cases throughout the day . As of 11 a.m. Friday, there were 192 TDSB schools with at least one active case — 275 students and 68 staff.

The Toronto Catholic District School Board also updates its information . As of Friday at 9:30 a.m., there were 112 schools with at least one confirmed case — 91 students and 18 staff.

Epidemiologists have that the rising numbers in the schools aren’t a surprise, and that the cases will be proportionate to the amount of COVID that is in the community.

10:50 a.m. The Houston Texans returned to their facility on Friday, a day after it was closed following a positive COVID-19 test by a player.

Interim coach Romeo Crennel said the team had no more positive tests and it would resume practice Friday for Sunday’s game at Jacksonville.

Linebacker Jacob Martin’s positive test on Wednesday night forced the closure of the facility Thursday. Linebackers Whitney Mercilus and Dylan Cole will also miss Sunday’s game after the NFL determined they had been in close contact with Martin.

10:18 a.m. (will be updated) Ontario is reporting 1,003 cases of COVID-19. Locally, there are 300 new cases in Toronto, 280 in Peel and 125 in York Region. 41,300 tests were completed.

10:04 a.m. Russia for the first time reported more than 20,000 COVID-19 cases in the last day as a surge in some regions is overwhelming local hospitals’ ability to care for patients.

There were 20,582 new coronavirus infections in the last day, with two-thirds of them outside of Moscow, the government’s virus response center said Friday. Russia has reported 1,733,440 total cases, the fourth-most globally.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin Thursday said infection rates and hospitalizations in the capital resumed their uptrend early this week and extended an order to keep older schoolchildren at home for another two weeks.

The disease’s spread in regions beyond Moscow and St. Petersburg has highlighted the problems plaguing Russia’s underfunded health-care system, with many areas struggling to handle the influx of sick people. The surge comes as federal authorities resist wider lockdowns, even as European countries from the U.K. to Greece have tightened restrictions this week.

More than 45,000 people have died with COVID-19 since April, according to government data, which cover only the period April-August.

9:50 a.m. Air pollution in parts of New Delhi have climbed to levels around nine times what the World Health Organization considers safe, turning grey winter skies into a putrid yellow and shrouding national monuments. Levels of the most dangerous particles, called PM 2.5, climbed to around 250 micrograms per cubic meter, which is considered hazardous to breathe, according to the state-run System of Air Quality Weather Forecasting and Research.

The throat-burning smoke regularly turns the city of 20 million people into the world’s most polluted at this time of the year.

This year’s haze, however, comes as New Delhi battles a new surge in coronavirus infections, and health experts fear that if the air quality continues to worsen, then people with chronic medical conditions could become more vulnerable.

“We are already registering more infections after the air quality started to deteriorate. I fear things will only get worse from here on,” said Arvind Kumar, a chest surgeon in New Delhi.

India has reported the second most coronavirus infections in the world after the United States, with more than 8.4 million confirmed cases and nearly 125,000 deaths. The number of new daily infections reported across the country has slowed since mid-September, but New Delhi has recently seen a new surge.

9 a.m. Virus pressure is mounting at nursing homes in France, where more than 400 people with COVID-19 have died in the past week and some residents are again being confined to their rooms and cut off from their families.

“I cry every day,” said Patricia Deliry, 81, whose daughter usually provides daily assistance at her Paris care home but has been kept away for the past two weeks as part of the home’s virus protection efforts. Deliry hasn’t been able to see fellow residents either. “We’re confined, closed in from morning to night.”

French Health Minister Olivier Veran said Friday that the government is sending 1.6 million rapid virus tests to care homes across the country to allow them to test personnel. It’s part of efforts to avoid mass new confinement of nursing home residents after the anguish caused during a nationwide lockdown in the spring. Germany launched a similar program this week.

8:35 a.m. Statistics Canada says the pace of job growth slowed in October as the economy added 84,000 jobs in the month compared with 378,000 in September.

The unemployment rate was 8.9 per cent compared with 9.0 per cent in September.

The average economist estimate was for a gain of 100,000 jobs in October and an unemployment rate of 8.8 per cent, according to financial data firm Refinitiv.

8:04 a.m. Overseas travellers should be quarantined in hotels guarded by police, an inquiry into an Australian city’s bungled quarantine program reported on Friday.

The Victoria state government’s decision to use private security firms instead of police and the military to enforce quarantines in Melbourne hotels has been widely blamed for lax infection controls that led to Australia’s worst virus resurgence in its second-largest city.

An inquiry into that quarantine program recommended in an interim report “a 24/7 police presence on-site at each quarantine facility.”

The government closed Melbourne Airport to international arrivals in July before commissioning retired judge Jennifer Coate to investigate what went wrong in hotel quarantine, which has been blamed for virtually all COVID-19 community transmission in Victoria.

Coate will deliver her final report and findings, including who made the decisions to hire private security and rebuff the military’s offer of help, by Dec. 21.

8:02 a.m. The top two divisions in Czech soccer will be allowed to restart after a month break caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Sports competitions were stopped in the Czech Republic on Oct. 12 amid a record surge in virus infections.

The government has agreed to allow exceptions under strict conditions. Soccer will be the first to resume. The games will be played in empty stadiums.

The top division says all players and staff will have to undergo virus tests between games. The league will restart with a match between Jablonec and Brno on Friday.

Czech clubs Sparta Prague, Slavia Prague and Liberec were allowed to play in the Europa League despite the ban on games in the country. They all currently have several players who have tested positive for the coronavirus.

7:16 a.m. The University of Maryland’s College Park campus will transition to mostly online courses after the school’s Thanksgiving break due to concerns about rising COVID-19 cases.

The school’s President, Darryll Pines, said Thursday in a letter to the university community that students who plan to travel from campus for the holiday should plan to remain away until the end of the semester. Students who choose to remain in residence halls for Thanksgiving may stay until the end of the semester.

“Like many of you, I wish for a return to normalcy for our university, including the full resumption of in-person classes and extracurricular activities. Yet this virus continues to demand vigilance, patience and perseverance,” Pines said. “I believe the actions outlined above are prudent, data-driven, and in the best interests of our university community.”

The school will also be providing campus-wide COVID-19 testing the week prior to Thanksgiving break.

6:20 a.m.: Slovenian police say they have detained 10 people following violent protests in the capital Ljubljana against lockdown measures designed to curb the spread of the new coronavirus.

Several hundred angry protesters on Thursday threw bottles, flares and rocks at the police who used tear gas and water cannon to disperse them in a rare riot in what in the usually calm Alpine nation.

The gather was organized in violation of a ban on gatherings that is in place in Slovenia as part of anti-virus rules. Public broadcaster RTV Slovenia says some of the protesters attacked media crews, hitting a photojournalist on the head.

5:55 a.m.: Australia’s highest court on Friday upheld the closure of a state’s border and dismissed billionaire businessman Clive Palmer’s argument that the pandemic measure was unconstitutional.

The seven High Court judges ruled that Western Australia’s state border closure to non-essential travel applied during “a hazard in the nature of a plague or epidemic” complied with the constitution.

The state shut its border to the rest of Australia on April 5 and has not recorded any cases of COVID-19 community transmission since April 11.

In other developments in the Asia-Pacific region:

— China has temporarily banned the entry of foreigners from at least eight countries as COVID-19 cases rise in Europe and elsewhere. Non-Chinese can no longer enter from Russia, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Philippines, India and Bangladesh, even if they hold a valid visa or residence permit for China.

— India has recorded 47,638 new cases of the coronavirus, taking its total to 8.4 million. Deaths rose by 670 in the last 24 hours, driving total fatalities to 124,985 on Friday, health ministry data showed. India has the world’s second-highest caseload behind the United States.

5 a.m.: Mary Moore never felt the typical symptoms of COVID-19.

The 80-year-old resident of Toronto’s shelter system never came down with a fever, never felt her chest tighten or a cough tickle her throat. Despite sharing a room at an Etobicoke women’s shelter with three others, and despite the risk of her age, she hadn’t been scared of contracting the virus.

But then, last month, she got sick — and fast. At first, it was hard to pinpoint precisely what was wrong.

“You know when you feel there’s something just not right?” Moore said. She asked staff to help her get to a nearby hospital. Then things started to deteriorate.

A test confirmed that she’d contracted COVID-19. But for the next few weeks, as she battled the virus in hospital, her primary symptom still wasn’t one that she recognized from warnings. She was hallucinating — imagining small animals in her hospital room, or that she’d been discharged, and was sitting down to a meal in Toronto’s Chinatown neighbourhood.

5 a.m.: in a northern region of the country where a mutated variation of the coronavirus has infected minks being farmed for their fur, leading to an order to kill millions of the animals.

Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said the move was contain the virus, and it came two days after the government ordered the cull of all 15 million minks bred at Denmark’s 1,139 mink farms.

In seven northern Denmark municipalities with some 280,000 residents sport and cultural activities have been suspended, public transportation has been stopped and regional borders have been closed. Only people with so-called “critical functions” such as police and health officials and different authorities are being permitted to cross municipal boundaries.

People in the region have been urged to to be tested. As of Saturday, restaurants must close, and school students from fifth grade and up will switch to remote learning Monday.

“We must knock down completely this virus variant,” Health Minister Magnus Heunicke said Thursday, adding that the mutated virus had been found in 12 people — 11 in northern Denmark and one in western Denmark.

Last month, Denmark started culling millions of minks in the north of the country after COVID-19 infections were reported among the stock there. Nationwide, at least 216 out of the 1,139 fur farms in Denmark have now been infected.

4:15 a.m.: Statistics Canada will say this morning how the country’s job market fared in October, with experts expecting the pace of gains to slow from September.

Job growth in Canada accelerated rather than slowed down in September, as the economy added 378,000 jobs coming out of the summer.

That brought overall employment to within 720,000 of pre-pandemic levels, or about three-quarters of the three million jobs lost at the outset of the pandemic in Canada.

The gains also dropped the unemployment rate to nine per cent.

The country is expected to get a little closer to recouping the losses with the figures for October.

Financial data firm Refinitiv says the average economist estimate is for a gain of 100,000 jobs in October and an unemployment rate of 8.8 per cent.

4 a.m.: The latest numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Canada as of 4 a.m. EST on Nov. 6, 2020:

There are 251,334 confirmed cases in Canada.

_ Quebec: 111,056 confirmed (including 6,378 deaths, 94,884 resolved)

_ Ontario: 80,690 confirmed (including 3,195 deaths, 69,137 resolved)

_ Alberta: 30,447 confirmed (including 343 deaths, 23,874 resolved)

_ British Columbia: 16,560 confirmed (including 273 deaths, 12,806 resolved)

_ Manitoba: 7,177 confirmed (including 91 deaths, 2,920 resolved)

_ Saskatchewan: 3,536 confirmed (including 25 deaths, 2,634 resolved)

_ Nova Scotia: 1,119 confirmed (including 65 deaths, 1,036 resolved)

_ New Brunswick: 347 confirmed (including 6 deaths, 313 resolved)

_ Newfoundland and Labrador: 292 confirmed (including 4 deaths, 285 resolved)

_ Prince Edward Island: 64 confirmed (including 64 resolved)

_ Yukon: 23 confirmed (including 1 death, 20 resolved)

_ Repatriated Canadians: 13 confirmed (including 13 resolved)

_ Northwest Territories: 10 confirmed (including 10 resolved)

_ Nunavut: No confirmed cases

_ Total: 251,334 (0 presumptive, 251,334 confirmed including 10,381 deaths, 207,996 resolved)

3 a.m.: The National Basketball Players Association the notion of starting this coming season on Dec. 22, the date that the league has been targeting in its talks about how and when to get teams back on the floor for a planned 72-game season.

The vote is expected to be part of a lengthy process. Among the primary matters still to be determined: how much escrow will be taken from player salaries because of the shorter-than-usual season, and how the league and the players will navigate testing and other health and safety issues amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

12 a.m.: The Old Nick on Danforth Ave. closed its doors because of in March but it was not until last month it quietly became reality that it will never reopen.

Countless businesses across Toronto have had to do the same. But where the closure of the Old Nick hits hard is the impact to local artists, particularly musicians, who say the owner’s commitment to paying performers a fair wage and dedication to inclusivity made it a very special, rare kind place.

Owner Kristine Lukanchoff says she from months of no income. It is impossible to climb out of a “hole that was getting deeper and deeper” while operating at a reduced capacity, per the changing government standards for restaurants.

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Heather Mallick: Are businesses worth more than human lives? In Doug Ford’s Ontario, the answer is yes

Aug 25, 2021 , , , , by shlf

Thanks largely to Premier Doug Ford’s intransigence, Ontario COVID-19 cases are rising so fast that a moral catastrophe threatens, prefaced by a series of shocks. It’s not just that , a frightening number, but that it will trend far higher than hospitals’ capacity to care for patients.

As the Star has reported, within two weeks hospital intensive care units will likely see 150 COVID-19 patients, which means that non-emergency surgery for people with cancer, heart and other conditions will have to be delayed again. The backlog from the last delayed surgeries will not clear. It will build.

The modelling suggests there will be “at least 400 such patients requiring intensive care, which is above the level of 350 where officials have previously warned it becomes ‘virtually impossible’ to perform non-emergency surgeries.”

People will die because of these delays. Just as families were heartbroken by not being at a loved one’s side before or at the point of death, families will suffer even more not knowing if a stricken relative could have been saved. Their bitterness and sorrow will be extreme.

But another shock could follow. If hospitals are overrun with cases, they will have to ration care, judging which patients will get possibly life-saving care and which will be left to die. Normally, according to the rules of triage, the sickest patients are treated first.

With intensive care units overwhelmed, triage might change. A very ill patient might be advised to accept death while a younger or less stricken patient might still have a chance.

Here’s where the real pain begins: a patient might have COVID-19 because they had fewer life chances in the first place. They were poor, ill-nourished, unable to speak English well, worked in a public-facing job or a careless workplace. Or they might just be a bad bet because of age or mental health or other factors that were impossible to alter.

When people begin to die for that reason, families do not get over it. That’s when the rage begins, a permanent anger at inbuilt unfairness, at a government that thought a business’s health was worth more than human health. The obvious answer is to pay businesses to stay closed in a lockdown that lasts long enough to hack at terrible rates of illness.

This is not the Progressive Conservative government’s way, so much so that it initially quietly altered the numbers provided by science to the number preferred by the government. , Public Health Ontario had provided numbers for the threshold at which “red” control, the second-highest level of restrictions, would kick in. They were 25 cases per 100,000 people and a lab test positivity rate of 2.5 per cent.

. On Friday it backed down after public furor and set the numbers at 40 cases per 100,000 with a positivity rate over 2.5 per cent, placing Toronto, Hamilton and other regions in the red control zone. If it weren’t for good journalism …

, overseen by an ethics committee from a government agency, suggested that in the worst case emergency, those with less than a 75 per cent chance of survival should be denied medication and care by ventilator.

If that is untenable, many more . Is quality of life considered? Should it be? Would people be asked to volunteer, and could they feel pressured?

Here’s the most shocking part, which will arrive perhaps next year. All this terrible fear and pain is a rehearsal for what happens when a successful vaccine arrives. Who will get it first? Presumably health-care workers and those, like the elderly and ill, who are already more vulnerable to COVID-19.

But after that, the classifications become more difficult. If there aren’t enough vaccines — people in Toronto have found even flu vaccines difficult to obtain — how will they be distributed?

I assume it will be done fairly badly, given that it is almost impossible to do well. No decision will please everyone, or even smaller cohorts. The anger people will feel as they see others get the vaccine ahead of them will be extraordinary. What is worrying is that the rage might be permanent.

It will leave some people forever free from goodwill. Look at the anti-maskers, furious over a wee, temporary, harmless bit of cloth. See unmasked men glaring on the Toronto subway, itching to start a fight.

How will they feel when they finally realize that death is stepping into the bright light, and making its choices? I say “feel” because they won’t think. They will lash out against logic, science and moral codes.

Life ends. If we all rage against the dying of the light, imagine the rage against those whose light will not die, while yours very likely will.

Times like these might cause mass resentment and moral disintegration in a once-civil society. Next year will test us sorely.

Heather Mallick is a Toronto-based columnist covering current affairs for the Star. Follow her on Twitter:

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As COVID cases rise in Ontario schools, could an extended school break help slow the pandemic?

Aug 25, 2021 , , , , by shlf

Before her kids go on Christmas break, Lindsay Matheson is going to make sure they bring their indoor shoes home from school.

With cases surging across the province, the weather getting worse — and a holiday season that will undoubtedly find families mixing, mingling and flouting the rules of social distancing — Matheson can’t imagine school will resume as per normal come January.

“This feels exactly like what happened in March,” said Matheson, a Toronto teacher and mom of three, of how students believed they’d return to school at some point after spring break, but never did.

“I kind of expect the same thing is going to happen now. So I’m going to learn from experience.”

While parents and teachers of elementary and secondary schools may be anticipating, and even planning for, a post-vacation lockdown, there has been no official word on an extended break — or a return-to-school strategy.

Toronto Public Health continues to push safety protocols already in place. School boards keep urging families to stay in their bubbles. And while universities in Ontario as well as other provinces, including Alberta, have long ago announced extended winter breaks or pivots to online learning, Ontario’s education minister remains mum on the issue.

In an emailed statement to the Star, spokesperson Caitlin Clark said that throughout the pandemic, the ministry has been guided by the chief medical officer of health, “the most senior public health authority in this province,” and “while some teacher unions have called for the closure of schools this fall, we believe schools should safely remain open.”

From Nov. 23, through the first week in December, the total number of school-related COVID cases, both active and resolved, jumped 48 per cent, according to epidemiologist Ahmed Al-Jaishi, who tracks cases across the province and in Ontario’s schools. In those 14 days alone, his data shows, active COVID cases increased by 35 per cent, leaping from 1,331 confirmed cases in 757 schools on Nov. 23 to 1,803 active cases in 947 schools Tuesday. (Those rose to 1,866 cases in 969 schools Wednesday.)

Since September, Al-Jaishi’s data shows, 43 per cent of Ontario schools have had at least one case of COVID and right now, about 20 per cent of schools have an active case. On Tuesday, Marc Garneau C.I. became the third TDSB school to be shut down.

Peter Juni, scientific director of the province’s COVID-19 Science Advisory Table, told the Star that extending the winter break by a week or so is not a bad idea, if we all are disciplined. But if we continue to socialize as a society, he said, “then it will probably not help much or at all.”

Juni, also a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Toronto’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine, said that right now it is important for the government to come up with a decision — to extend the break or not — and give people enough time to plan. Whatever the decision, he said, it is also imperative to focus on communities where transmission is high and take additional measures in those schools.

Leslie Wolfe, who heads the Toronto local of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, is calling on the province to announce an extended break, saying they should already have done so out of “an abundance of caution.” And to give teachers time to prepare. Even though teachers have been told since Day 1 to be ready at any time to pivot to online learning, doing it well takes planning and preparation.

“There needs to be enough notice for teachers to do the detailed kind of planning they would do,” she said.

On Wednesday, the group urged the province, Toronto Public Health and the Toronto District School Board in to close schools for at least two weeks after the break (with online lessons) and fund asymptomatic testing at all TDSB schools.

Taking the extra time after the break may be particularly important, she said, because kids may transmit the virus asymptomatically. The extra time following Christmas and New Year’s may at least allow for parents to see if symptoms develop.

A Sept. 21 article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal titled “Have we misjudged the role of children in spreading COVID-19?” explores whether kids play a larger role in transmission of the virus that initially suspected. The picture of whether and how young kids are involved in the spread is “confusing,” the article says, because of blind spots in the early research as well as potential bias.

Research showing that kids have fewer antibodies than adults may be misleading, the article says, because they were done when schools were closed and transmission among children was likely low. By the same token, the article says, the murky research has made it difficult to tease apart whether or how school closures have affected transmission rates. Or how many kids are asymptomatic.

Other studies in the last three months have

While Jennifer Brown, president of Elementary Teachers of Toronto, said she feels it’s important for kids to get back to school as soon as possible, she says it needs to be done in the safest possible way. For her, that means reducing class sizes to where both students and teachers can maintain a proper social distance as well as making sure each child has a proper mask and is taught in a well ventilated building.

There are school buildings that are in need of repair, she said. “Many parents would prefer for their kids to be in school,” she said, “if they were confident in the safety measures put in place.”

Even about a month ago, Matheson said it seemed for a bit that schools might escape the rise in cases. But over the last couple of weeks, she said, there have been cases at the school her daughters attend — and at the school where she teaches. And now, she said, things feels like they are closing in. She and her family plan to keep a low profile over the holidays.

But will everyone else? Matheson said she is nervous about the return to school, and said she’s angry at the government for “making this feel very last-minute.”

Michele Henry is a Toronto-based reporter for the Star, writing health and education stories. Follow her on Twitter:

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Bruce Arthur: Ontario already had a losing strategy in fighting the pandemic. Doug Ford just made it a lot worse

Aug 25, 2021 , , , , by shlf

At least you’ll remember when Ontario gave up. Or maybe not, since it was timed for the day of the attention-sucking American election. Maybe that was a coincidence: the province set the new bar for COVID-19 restrictions sky-high.

But sources indicate this plan was weeks in the making, so probably not. Seven months into the pandemic Ontario praised itself for posting clear COVID-19 restriction speed limits. But they set the speed limit everywhere at 200 miles per hour, and our police force isn’t fast enough to keep up. Drive safe, everyone.

“This is throwing in the towel,” said one source familiar with the process of setting new thresholds.

“This gives us a tool that we can really react and prevent the spread when we see it going into certain regions,” said the premier, on the day he raised the bar on what constitutes spread in certain regions. “Before … everyone would start reacting when we saw the numbers going through the roof,” said Doug Ford, on the day he moved up the roof.

Ford seemed to say we are doing better per capita than Manitoba and Alberta and Quebec and the United States, so why not try to catch them?

“This is going to be very ugly,” said Dr. Andrew Morris, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Toronto, and the medical director of the Antimicrobial Stewardship Program at Sinai-University Health Network. “We’re following the European approach here. The very first question that should be asked is in the presence of ongoing growth, how can you in any way justify loosening measures? That makes absolutely zero sense. The one thing you shouldn’t do when you’ve got a losing strategy is take on a worse strategy. Which is what they’re going to do.”

The new dashboard is colour-coded: green is great, yellow is less great, orange is worrisome, and red is what used to be Stage 2, or what Toronto, Ottawa, Peel and York are in. But now, to move a jurisdiction back from what used to be Stage 3 to Stage 2 — to close indoor dining, bars and restaurants, gyms, cinemas, etcetera — you would need 100 cases per 100,000 people per week, plus a 10 per cent positivity rate, plus several other factors, including hospitals and public health at risk of being overwhelmed.

To put the thresholds in perspective, the Star’s Ed Tubb notes two regions have gone over 100 per 100,000 per week in the entire pandemic — Haldimand-Norfolk in June, and Peel this week. Since the province ramped up testing in the spring no region has even come close to 10 per cent positivity. Ten per cent is where by not implementing restrictions until it was too late, and their hospital system is now on the verge of being overwhelmed.

So what data led to this? Ford said, weakly, “We see a little bit of a flattening. We see what’s happening in Ottawa.” Ottawa’s case counts fell in October, and have been flat over the past week.

Under this plan, nothing changes for bars, restaurants, sports and recreational facilities, meeting and event spaces, retail, personal care services, casinos, bingo halls, gaming establishments, cinemas, or performing arts facilities until the system tips from orange to red; they continue to operate with new restrictions. And bars, restaurants, casinos and gyms still have indoor service in red.

In other words, this is designed not to intervene in the economy until it’s already too late, and even then, the province reserves wiggle room, saying “decisions about moving to new measures will require overall risk assessment by the government.” Meanwhile, Ontario’s seven-day average is rising, test positivity is rising, raw testing numbers are falling, public health communication is poor, our test-trace-isolate architecture can barely handle what’s happening now in some regions, and winter’s moving in.

Look, lockdowns produce real harm, but letting the virus overrun society produces more. Three weeks ago the province’s own science table wrote, “In regions with high transmission, we therefore recommend restricting indoor activities (such as) indoor dining, banquet halls, gyms, bars, clubs and casinos.” It recommended that “additional public health measures (be) introduced if there are more than 25 new (COVID-19) infections per 100,000 people per week,” because below that, “the public health benefit of additional restrictions on indoor venues may not outweigh the consequences.”

So Ontario redefined what constituted high transmission. York, Peel and Ottawa exit Stage 2 this weekend; Toronto, which is fighting this hellaciously under the surface, is scheduled for a week after that, as if the virus respects dates.

“It’s like public health is treading water, and the premier is pushing their heads down,’” said Dr. Michael Warner, head of critical care at Michael Garron Hospital in East York. “It’s government that makes the decisions on public health, and not public health.”

Repellently, it was framed as personal responsibility. “We’re asking the public to be even more engaged on your personal risk assessment, so that you’re going to have to assess each of your settings, knowing what is there and what is in place,” said Dr. David Williams, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health. “What are you going to do, as an individual, as a family, as with your children or loved ones, to protect your loved ones? Because we want to put that decision-making over to you.”

“They’re relying on people to understand their own risk threshold, and that’s not working well, and what you’re saying now, we’re going to open up, and the perception is things are safe,” says epidemiologist Dr. Nitin Mohan, who teaches public and global health at Western University, and cofounded ETIO, a public health consulting firm. “Essentially, you’re inviting a disaster.”

Meanwhile, the people who were going to have trouble protecting themselves now have less of a chance to protect themselves. This government and contact tracing and long-term-care staffing in the summer, failed to intervene when case counts started to climb in early September, and has now decided to move the goalposts as far towards the horizon as they dare.

Maybe the slow creep of the virus to older Ontarians, and into long-term-care homes, will somehow stop. Maybe bars and restaurants and businesses don’t promote the spread of the virus as much as the world thinks. Maybe the hospitals won’t tip over. Maybe a provincial government that just chucked all its previous strategy in the name of financial health is nimble and brave enough to keep the virus that has overrun the world at bay. Maybe Ontario is special, or gets lucky. I truly hope so.

But if not, this government and its advisers own it. Because they were warned, and here we go.

Bruce Arthur is a Toronto-based columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: