Today’s coronavirus news: Health Canada has approved Pfizer’s antiviral treatment; Ontario reports 3,887 people in hospital and 578 in ICU – Toronto Star
The latest coronavirus news from Canada and around the world Monday. This file will be updated throughout the day. Web links to longer stories if available.
10:27 a.m. Health Canada has approved Pfizer’s antiviral treatment for COVID-19.
The authorization posted to the Health Canada website this morning says the treatment is greenlighted for adult patients with mild or moderate COVID-19 who are also at high risk of becoming more seriously ill.
Health Canada did not authorize it for use on teenagers.
It is also not authorized for use on patients who are already hospitalized because of COVID-19.
Paxlovid is a treatment that uses a combination of drugs to prevent the virus that causes COVID-19 from replicating once it has infected a patient.
Clinical trials show it was almost 90 per cent effective at preventing serious illness in higher-risk patients who received it within the first five days of being infected.
10:18 a.m. Ontario is reporting 3,887 people are hospitalized with COVID-19, with 578 people in ICU.
The province also reported at least 8,521 new cases of COVID-19, and an additional 23 deaths.
67,000 doses were administered on Sunday. 91.4 per cent of Ontarians 12+ have one dose and 88.7 per cent have two doses.
10:05 a.m. Canada’s largest airlines and the country’s busiest airport are asking the federal government to drop its rule requiring vaccinated travellers to test on arrival for COVID-19.
In a letter Monday to the federal and Ontario governments, Air Canada, WestJet and Toronto’s Pearson airport called for a shift of testing capacity from airports to the community.
“As the government has ramped up testing at airports for international arrivals, we have seen frontline workers struggle to get PCR tests and lab processing capacity decrease significantly,” the letter said, citing schools, hospitals and long-term care homes as particular priorities.
“There is a growing discrepancy between resources allocated to asymptomatic travellers and to those who need it most.”
As COVID-19 cases have surged in recent weeks, many provinces have decided to restrict molecular PCR testing to those at a higher risk of being hospitalized from COVID-19 or who are in settings where the virus could spread more quickly.
Travellers coming to Canada need to have a pre-arrival negative molecular test result for COVID-19. Once they arrive, those coming from any country other than the United States are tested again and must isolate until they get their results. Those coming from the U.S. are tested randomly.
8:27 a.m. Ontario hospitals are facing shortages of critical drugs to treat COVID-19 patients amid a surge of cases, forcing some physicians to choose which patients receive potentially life-saving care, while others don’t have access to the drugs at all.
In anticipation of an Omicron-fuelled rise in cases, many hospitals in December had already started to ration key COVID therapeutics — in short supply across many regions — to patients who would benefit the most.
But drug shortages have escalated in the last week alongside a crush of COVID patients needing care on medical wards and in intensive care units, with at least one Toronto-area hospital instituting a lottery system to determine which patients will receive a dose of a potentially life-saving medication.
Read more from the Star’s Megan Ogilvie.
8:20 a.m. (updated) Novak Djokovic could be barred from the French Open later this year because he’s not vaccinated against COVID-19, a possibility that raised the stakes for the tennis star just hours after he was deported from Australia and prevented from defending his Australian Open title.
A plane carrying the No. 1-ranked player touched down in his native Serbia on Monday, closing at least the first chapter in a dizzying drama that has resonance in the world of elite sports, Australian pandemic politics and the polarized debate over the coronavirus shots.
Djokovic was expected to receive a hero’s welcome from his countrymen, many of whom think he was unfairly treated in Australia. But only handful of fans waving the Serbian flag greeted him at the airport in the capital, Belgrade.
6:28 a.m. Greece Monday imposed a vaccination mandate for people over age 60, as coverage remains below the European Union average and a recent spike in infections has sustained pressure on hospitals.
Older people failing to get vaccinated will face penalties, starting at a 50-euro ($57) fine in January and followed by a monthly fine of 100 euros ($114) after that.
About two-thirds of Greece’s 10.7 million population is currently fully vaccinated — the EU average is just over 70%. The rate of death and daily hospitalizations has increased following the recent spread of the omicron variant, though pressure on ICU capacity has eased slightly.
Health Minister Thanos Plevris said fines would be collected through the tax office with the money to be used to help fund state hospitals.
“The age factor is important because of its impact on the public health service,” Plevris told private Open TV on Sunday.
5:35 a.m. (updated) Millions more Canadian students will head back to school today as officials across four provinces work to keep classrooms safe from COVID-19 and the threat of Omicron-driven staff shortages.
Students in Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba and Nova Scotia are set to return to class after starting the new year online because of record-high case counts.
In Ontario, however, a winter storm is throwing a wrench in the school reopening plan, with many boards announcing schools will remain closed today due to heavy snow and bus cancellations. Some boards are offering online classes instead, while others are not.
The provinces had said the switch to remote learning was intended to take pressure off the health-care system and give schools more time to improve safety measures.
Deploying rapid antigen tests and upgrading air quality in schools are among the steps governments say they’ve taken ahead of the return to class, with some of the work still underway.
Still, some parents and teachers’ unions are voicing concerns that those efforts won’t be enough to keep classrooms safe and ensure there’s enough staff available to keep schools operating.
Officials and school boards have told parents there are contingency plans in place, but to expect potential shifts back to online learning if the virus’s spread forces enough people into isolation.
5:35 a.m. Some Ontario school boards scrambled to adjust their plans for reopening schools on Monday as a winter storm began blanketing much of the southern part of the province with snow.
The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board announced it would continue with remote learning on Monday after Environment Canada issued a winter storm warning for the region, cautioning 40 centimetres of snow could fall by Monday evening.
The Toronto District School Board said that if the snow prevented schools from reopening, students should attend class remotely, a 180 from the plan it laid out in December.
Hamilton-Wentworth’s board, meanwhile, announced that if buses had to be cancelled, classes would be, too — both online and in-person.
The snowfall in southern Ontario added a wrinkle to the province’s already contentious school reopening plan.
5:33 a.m. Two major public health measures are set to ease across Quebec today as residents prepare to resume life without a nighttime curfew and send their children back to classes held in-person.
The provincewide curfew requiring residents to stay home from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., which has been in effect since Dec. 31, will be lifted tonight.
Premier François Legault said last Thursday the province’s daily COVID-19 case count appears to have peaked, allowing the province to end the measure put in place to slow the surge in infections.
Thousands of students will also be returning to school in-person today, with the province requiring attendees to remain masked at all times while indoors.
But several schools announced over the weekend they would not open their doors today due to a major winter storm forecast to descend on parts of the province.
Some parents have expressed concerns that Legault’s government hasn’t done enough to ensure student safety in the classroom amid COVID-19 infection and hospitalization rates that remain near all-time highs.
5:32 a.m. A delegation of Indonesian officials made a rare visit to Israel recently to discuss coronavirus strategies, despite the countries not having diplomatic relations, Israel’s Army Radio reported Monday.
The Indonesian health officials aimed “to learn how to deal with the coronavirus pandemic” and met with Israeli officials, the report said. The report did not specify when the visit took place.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry would not confirm the report, but said that Israel “believes in international co-operation in every regard to the fight against the coronavirus” and is prepared to share information and experience.
Israel and Indonesia do not have diplomatic relations, but for years there have been back-channel overtures to establish official ties. Indonesia has refused to normalize relations with Israel until the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, and has been a staunch supporter of the Palestinians.
5:31 a.m. A 26-year-old woman in China’s capital Beijing who contracted the omicron strain of COVID-19 has drawn national attention on social media for her shopping trips.
The woman, who has not been identified by name, reportedly visited high-end shops in the city before showing symptoms of having the virus.
It wasn’t known where or how she became infected and her present condition hasn’t been made public.
The woman’s case was widely discussed online and reflects the government’s painstaking efforts to track down and isolate every virus case, along with identifying and testing anyone an infected person may have been in contact with.
The first reported case of the omicron variant has prompted stepped-up measures in Beijing, just weeks before it hosts the Winter Olympic Games.
More than 13,000 people and all places visited by the 26-year-old woman have been tested and her apartment complex and workplace sealed off.
5:30 a.m. Austria will impose fines on those without COVID-19 vaccinations from mid-March after a transition phase that starts in February, said Chancellor Karl Nehammer.
People unwilling to get inoculated will face penalties of as much as 3,600 euros ($4,108), the Austrian leader told reporters on Sunday. The mandate will apply to all adults living in the country except when a medical exemption is granted.
Austria’s policy is being closely watched as a model for similar ambitions in other European Union countries. Italy has imposed a vaccine mandate on people age 50 or over, Greece will start fining seniors who don’t get their shots, and French President Emmanuel Macron has pledged to make life difficult for the unvaccinated.
In the first phase of Austria’s policy, the unvaccinated will get written notification. Starting in mid-March, police and other officials will start checking vaccine status, imposing fines, and ordering vaccine appointments if necessary. Continued dissent will prompt another 600 euro fine after a month.
Fines can be reversed by taking a vaccine within two weeks of being identified.
Monday 5:28 a.m. Beijing’s first reported case of the omicron variant has prompted stepped-up measures in the nation’s capital, just weeks before it hosts the Winter Olympic Games.
Following the positive test announced Saturday, more than 13,000 people and all places visited by the patient over the previous days have been tested, according to state media. The person’s apartment complex and workplace have been sealed off.
The infected person lives and works in the city’s northwestern district of Haidian and had no travel history outside of Beijing for the past two weeks, according to state media.
State media on Monday reported the capital, with its 20 million residents, was considering stronger restrictions on travel. All transit links with Tianjin have already been severed. International flights have been sharply reduced and domestic travellers have been barred if they transferred to a second location before arriving in Beijing.
