The latest coronavirus news from Canada and around the world on Friday. This file will be updated throughout the day. Web links to longer stories if available.
6 am: Jackie Logie knew something was wrong when her 14-year-old Labrador Retriever, Flinstone, suddenly stopped walking last month.
He already had an annual vet appointment booked for the following week, one that took him almost a month to land, but when he tried to move forward, he was unsuccessful. The clinic suggested that she call other locations, but warned her that she would face similar challenges.
Before COVID-19, you had never faced a wait, even for small issues. But long waits for routine and emergency treatment have become standard as veterinarians battle increasing numbers of pets and staffing shortages. Both have been exacerbated by the pandemic. People are adopting pets more than ever. And the staff shortage, a growing problem for years, is now so dire that retired veterinarians are even being called back to duty.
Read the full story of Star’s Simran Singh, Dorcas Marfo and Ivy Mak.
5:58 am: Alberta’s health system chief says the COVID-19 hospital crisis has gotten so severe that a key reason the system hasn’t collapsed is because patients are dying.
“Every day we see a new peak (total critically ill patients),” Dr. Verna Yiu, Alberta Health Services president and CEO, said Thursday.
Yiu said hospitals have admitted an average of two dozen or more critically ill COVID-19 patients each day since Sunday.
“It’s tragic that we can only keep up with these kinds of numbers because, in part, some of our ICU patients have passed away,” he said. “This reality has a profound and lasting impact on our UCI teams.”
On Thursday there were 310 intensive care patients, the vast majority of them with COVID, and the vast majority of COVID patients are either not fully vaccinated or not vaccinated at all.
Alberta normally has 173 ICU beds, but has doubled that number to 350 by occupying additional spaces, such as operating rooms, and reassigning staff.
The result is that non-urgent surgeries were canceled en masse across the province, including transplants, tumors, cancer operations and surgeries on children.
Doctors are being informed when resources are so scarce that they have to decide on the spot which patients are receiving life-saving care and which are not.
Yiu said it is a fluid situation and they are still determining when and how doctors will be asked to make those life and death decisions.
5:57 am: With its own vaccines, Cuba hopes to achieve “complete immunization” against COVID-19 by the end of the year, the president of the island nation whose 11 million citizens have been isolated by the US embargo told the United Nations General Assembly. for a long time. Thursday.
President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez dedicated much of his recorded speech to strike down the United States for what he called its policies of economic coercion and deprivation, which he said were designed to “erase the Cuban revolution from the political map of the world.”
But he also praised Cuba’s medical and scientific communities for what he described as their heroic achievements in creating vaccines to fight the pandemic. More than a third of the Cuban population has been fully vaccinated with them, he said.
5:56 am: A Florida school district has received cash from the administration of President Joe Biden to offset state pay cuts imposed by a board vote for an anti-coronavirus mask mandate for students.
Alachua County School Superintendent Carlee Simon said in a news release Thursday that the district has received $ 148,000 through a program from the United States Department of Education.
Simon says Alachua, where Gainesville and the University of Florida are located, is the first district in the nation to receive such a grant.
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and state education officials have begun slashing salaries paid to school board members in Florida who voted to require masks from students. DeSantis is in favor of allowing parents to decide whether their children cover their faces and is in the middle of court battles on this broader issue.
About a dozen school boards in Florida, representing more than half of the state’s students, have voted to challenge the state ban on mask mandates despite Gov. Ron DeSantis’s decision to withhold some of their money.
5:55 am: South Korea has reported its biggest daily increase in coronavirus since the start of the pandemic, as people returned from the biggest party of the year in the country.
Korea’s Disease Prevention and Control Agency said more than 1,750 of the 2,434 new cases reported on Friday were in the capital area, where officials have raised concerns about an erosion in citizen surveillance despite enforcement. of the strictest social distancing rules, except for a closure since July.
Broadcasts were expected to worsen beyond the capital region during the Chuseok holiday, the Korean version of Thanksgiving that began on the weekend and continued through Wednesday, a period when millions of people travel. across the country to meet family members.
“It will be crucial to maintain the effectiveness of our anti-virus campaign over the next week, when the effect of increased travel during the holidays will manifest itself more clearly,” Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum said during a briefing on the virus.
Restrictions in the Seoul metropolitan area prevent gatherings of three or more people after 6 p.m. unless participants are fully vaccinated. Officials have said that people’s tiredness and frustration with social distancing is becoming a growing challenge in the country’s fight against COVID-19.
The country has now reported a daily increase of more than 1,000 for 80 days in a row. His previous one-day record was 2,221 reported on August 11.
5:55 am: Australia’s two largest cities are moving closer to ending lockdowns as vaccination rates rise, but leaders warn that people must be cautious with their new freedoms and that the number of coronavirus cases will inevitably rise.
In the state of New South Wales, where an outbreak continues to grow in Sydney, Premier Gladys Berejiklian has set a goal to reopen on October 11 once vaccination milestones are reached.
But he said on Friday it would have to be done “with a certain degree of caution and responsibility” because otherwise too many people would end up in hospitals. Meanwhile, in the state of Victoria, where there is an outbreak in Melbourne,
Health Minister Martin Foley said there had been a “tremendous” increase in vaccines and that there was “no shortage of enthusiasm” among people who wanted to receive injections.
Health officials in New South Wales reported 1,043 new cases and 11 deaths on Friday, while Victoria officials reported 733 new cases and one death.
5:52 am: Two teahouses in a southern Alberta community have become an example of the uncertainty caused by the government that allows companies to make their own decisions about what is essentially a vaccine passport.
Restaurants, bars and pubs have been debating whether they will require a vaccination record before customers can enter or whether to limit it to patios and takeout.
Last week, Prime Minister Jason Kenney introduced a “restriction waiver program” that allows homeowners to operate with almost no COVID-19 rules as long as they request proof of vaccination. Those who choose not to do so must adhere to the highest public health standards.
The United Conservative government has been criticized for downloading the decision. Critics say it causes confusion and forces compliant companies to face the ire of customers who oppose vaccination.
Read the full Canadian Press story here.
5:52 am: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approved booster vaccines for millions of older or vulnerable Americans on Thursday, opening an important new phase in the U.S. vaccination campaign against COVID-19.
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky approved a series of recommendations from an advisory panel Thursday night.
The advisers said boosters should be offered to people 65 and older, nursing home residents and people ages 50 to 64 who have underlying health problems at risk. The additional dose would be given after at least six months have passed after your last Pfizer injection.
However, Walensky decided to make a recommendation that the panel had rejected.
On Thursday, the panel voted against saying that people can receive a booster if they are between the ages of 18 and 64 and are healthcare workers or have another job that puts them at higher risk of being exposed to the virus.
But Walensky disagreed and re-included that recommendation, noting that such a move aligns with a booster clearance decision by the FDA earlier this week. The category it included covers people living in institutional settings that increase their risk of exposure, such as prisons or homeless shelters, as well as healthcare workers.
The panel had offered the option of a booster for people ages 18 to 49 who have chronic health problems and want one. But the advisers refused to go further, opening reinforcements to healthy frontline healthcare workers who are not at risk for serious illness but who want to avoid even a mild infection.
The panel voted 9 to 6 to reject that proposal. But Walensky chose to ignore the advice of the advisory committee on that issue. In a decision several hours after the panel rose, Walensky issued a statement saying he had reinstated the recommendation.
Reference-www.thestar.com