The latest coronavirus news from Canada and around the world on Thursday. This file will be updated throughout the day. Web links to longer stories if available. “
6:27 am: Vaccines are the way out. Do you want to see friends, go to restaurants, drink in a bar until you drop? Get vaccinated. Do you want to fly to another province, work in a hospital or in the federal government, go back up to something like we used to live? Get vaccinated.
What if you are a government that wishes like a child for all this to end? Make sure people get vaccinated, almost in any way you can.
Because this is where we are. The pandemic that has upset the whole damn planet can effectively end, within its current parameters, if enough people get vaccinated. That is all. Canada has so many vaccines that it had to stop deliveries. In Ontario, 80.7 percent of all eligible people received two doses on Wednesday morning and 86.1 percent at least one.
It’s great, but it’s not enough, not if you want to reach 90 percent of all Ontarians to protect yourself from the Delta. Even once Pfizer is approved for ages 5-11, which will hopefully happen in the next eight weeks, that’s another million Ontarians, or so. To reach 90 percent of the population over the age of 5 requires another million people after that. And currently Ontario is only administering about 40,000 single doses per day.
Read the full Bruce Arthur column from Star.
5:45 am: Some family physicians in Alberta say they are dealing with an increasing number of aggressive, misinformed and distrustful patients who want a note exempting them from receiving the COVID-19 vaccine.
Two of the three Calgary doctors who spoke to The Canadian Press also said that some people yelled racist comments at them after they refused to write a note because the patients had no health problems known to cause serious side effects to an injection. .
“They mostly comment on my brown skin and hijab,” said Dr. Sakina Raj. “I am also Muslim … so they come to religion and they get personal with it.
“It’s really scary because I feel like they were so verbally abusive at times, that they could hurt us. But I’m still nice to them. I kindly calm them down. I have too much experience to feel stressed.”
Raj said that since Prime Minister Jason Kenney announced a vaccination trial program to try to roll back a fourth crippling wave in the province, safety has become such a concern that the Sehet Medical Clinic is now dealing with new patients. wanting a phone-only exemption.
Raj and another Calgary doctor said more than three patients a day request an exemption from their clinics. Dr. Mukarram Zaidi said that a patient tried to bribe him with $ 200.
Zaidi said some are concerned that the vaccine is a cap to place a microchip in their body, while others are anxious about a possible allergic reaction.
Doctors add that many of their colleagues across the province have successfully persuaded Vaccine that he is hesitant to receive his injections by explaining what is involved and addressing his concerns.
5 am: If there’s one good thing about the fact that hundreds of companies are challenging Ontario’s passport laws, it’s that they’re proud.
According to Star’s Jacob Lorinc report this week, an online directory called BAD (Companies Against Discrimination) currently lists roughly 680 companies that refuse to ask customers about their vaccination status.
Similarly, a Facebook group called the Ontario Businesses Against Health Pass made up of nearly 140,000 people describes themselves like this: “A group for people to compile a list of companies that believe that a medical passport in Ontario is unconstitutional. Your personal health status is irrelevant and is your own personal choice. “
It’s good to know that business owners who disobey public health measures enjoy talking about circumventing public health measures, thereby alerting the rest of us to those businesses that we should literally avoid like the plague.
But what about customers who lose track of where it’s safe to go and where it’s not?
Read star columnist Emma Teitel’s column.
4:45 am: Healthcare workers who were once hailed for saving lives in the COVID-19 outbreak now receive panic buttons and shed their gowns before going out in public to avoid harassment.
Across the country, doctors and nurses on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic are dealing with hostility, threats, and violence from patients angered by safety rules designed to prevent the virus from spreading. Some hospitals are so concerned that they have equipped workers with panic buttons, while others have limited the number of public accesses to their facilities.
In Idaho, nurses are afraid to go to the grocery stores unless they have removed their gowns so that angry residents will not approach them.
“A year ago, we were healthcare heroes and everyone was applauding us,” said Dr. Stu Coffman, a Dallas-based emergency room physician. “And now we are being bullied, disbelieving and ridiculed in some areas for what we are trying to do, which is just depressing and frustrating.” Cox Medical Center Branson in Missouri began giving panic buttons to up to 400 nurses and other employees after assaults per year tripled between 2019 and 2020 to 123, a spokeswoman said.
During Labor Day weekend in Colorado, a bystander threw an unidentified liquid at a nurse working at a mobile vaccine clinic in suburban Denver. Signs posted around the clinic’s tent were run over and destroyed by another person in a van.
4:30 am: Ontario now recommends the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for young adults ages 18-24 due to an “observed increase” in rare conditions of heart inflammation following doses of Moderna, primarily in men.
The change announced on Wednesday by the Ministry of Health was made “as a precaution” given the increase in cases of pericarditis and myocarditis. It goes into effect immediately, but authorities said people in the age group can still get an injection of Moderna with informed consent.
Describing the new guidance as a “preferred recommendation,” senior ministry staff said in a background briefing that there was a one in 5,000 risk of myocarditis or pericarditis for men ages 18 to 24 after a second dose of Modern
That compares with a risk of one in 28,000 for those who received Pfizer, roughly five times lower. Risk rates are based on more than 96,000 second doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines injected between June 1 and August 7.
Read the full story of Rob Ferguson and Robert Benzie here.
Reference-www.thestar.com