Today’s coronavirus news: Disparities in Toronto COVID rates improved in fourth wave


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

7:45 a.m. Toronto has high vaccination coverage compared to major US and European cities. But vaccine rates in the city’s lower-income racialized neighborhoods, in places like Scarborough, Thorncliffe Park and the northwest corner, have lagged, despite the fact that they had higher rates of COVID.

But at a meeting last month of the Board of Health, there was some evidence of progress to narrow this gap. The disparity between COVID rates in racialized and white people, and between people with lower and higher incomes, decreased in the fourth wave, according to analysis presented at the meeting.

As well, the 35 neighborhoods prioritized for intense neighborhood clinics and community ambassadors saw an average increase of 19 percentage points from June 2021 to April 2022, in first-dose vaccine coverage, (66 to 85 per cent), while all other neighborhoods had a rise of 13 percentage points.

Read more from the Star’s May Warren.

7:20 a.m. Supermarkets, malls and restaurants in Shanghai will be allowed to open in a limited capacity starting Monday, officials said, even while it remained unclear whether residents would be let out from their homes.

The city’s Vice Mayor Chen Tong said Sunday at a daily press briefing that grocery stores, malls, convenience stores and pharmacies will be allowed to reopen while implementing measures that “reduce the flow of people.”

Agriculture markets will also be allowed to reopen while ensuring “no contact” transactions. Restaurants will be allowed to serve takeout.

However, Shanghai’s transportation department said Sunday that all subway lines in the city had stopped operating. It was unclear when those services would restart.

7 am North Korea has confirmed 15 more deaths and hundreds of thousands of additional patients with fevers as it mobilizes more than a million health and other workers to try to suppress the country’s first COVID-19 outbreak, state media reported Sunday.

After maintaining a widely disputed claim to be coronavirus-free for more than two years, North Korea announced Thursday that it had found its first COVID-19 patients since the pandemic began.

It has said a fever has spread across the country “explosively” since late April but hasn’t disclosed exactly how many COVID-19 cases it has found. Some experts say North Korea lacks the diagnostic kits needed to test a large number of suspected COVID-19 patients.

Read more from The Associated Press.

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