The latest coronavirus news from Canada and around the world on Sunday. This file will be updated throughout the day. Web links to longer stories if available.
7:45 am: More than 80 percent of eligible Ontarians have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and, with the possibility of vaccines being offered to young children in the coming months, the family pattern of new infections of the pandemic, wave after wave, could soon subside. .
Scientists believe that as more people increase their immunity to the virus, either through vaccination or infection, cases in Ontario are on their way to falling to endemic levels as early as spring, provided of course not. a more communicable and elusive variant of the vaccine is developed. his head meanwhile.
The implication of COVID-19 becoming endemic – that is, virus infections that occur at some constant reference level in the population – is that we will simply have to learn to live with it.
Read more from Star’s Kenyon Wallace.
7:05 am: In late May, Samantha Yammine, a Toronto neuroscientist who advocates for vaccines, shared what had become, for her, a source of shame and embarrassment. For much of her life, Yammine had lived with severe anxiety around needles, a phobia that led her to avoid vaccination for years.
As a scientist, Yammine understood the price of the pandemic and knew that mass immunization was the way out. But she was crushed with fear and dread. How could you be a vaccine advocate if you didn’t get vaccinated against COVID-19?
“I knew I had to get it, but I honestly didn’t think I could do it,” he said.
Yammine, 31, known as Science Sam On social media, they are not afraid of needles the way some people are mildly distressed by spiders or thunderstorms. Their fear is rooted in childhood trauma and triggers the same fight or flight response that someone else might have if they encountered a bear or intruder in the home.
But when Yammine shared her story on Twitter, it had a positive development. After months of planning, therapy, and an appointment at an accessibility clinic, she had made it – she was vaccinated.
Read the full story of Amy Dempsey from Star.
6:30 a.m: Billions more in profits are at stake for some vaccine manufacturers as the US moves toward dispensing booster shots of COVID-19 to bolster Americans’ protection against the virus.
What manufacturers can earn depends on how big the rollout is.
US health officials endorsed booster shots of the Pfizer vaccine Thursday night for all Americans 65 and older, along with tens of millions of younger people who are at increased risk of contracting the coronavirus. due to their health conditions or their jobs.
Officials described the move as a first step. The boosters will likely be offered even more widely in the coming weeks or months, including boosters for vaccines made by Moderna and Johnson & Johnson. That, in addition to the continued growth of early vaccines, could mean a big gain in sales and profits for Pfizer and Moderna in particular.
“The opportunity, frankly, reflects the billions of people around the world who would need a vaccine and a booster,” said Jefferies analyst Michael Yee.
6 am: Brits these days, although in most cases not required, are encouraged to wear face coverings in crowded indoor spaces. But Prime Minister Boris Johnson appears regularly in the stuffy and stuffy House of Commons, face to face with other unmasked Conservative lawmakers.
For critics, that image sums up the failure in the government’s strategy, which has abandoned most of the pandemic restrictions and is committed to voluntary restriction and a high vaccination rate to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
As winter approaches, with the threat of a new wave of COVID-19, Britain’s light touch sets it apart from more cautious nations.
“The history of this government in the pandemic is too small, too late,” said Layla Moran, a liberal opposition Democratic lawmaker who heads the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Coronavirus.
She said some UK hospitals are already seeing the number of virus patients in intensive care units that they would normally expect in the depths of winter, although daily hospital admissions overall are running at about a fifth of the peak of January.
4:05 am: In the past, Katie McCarron could count on her best Canadian customers to make the trip to her store in Portland, Oregon, to stock up on their favorite high-quality, human-grade pet food.
COVID-19 had other plans. However, soon so did Portland Pet Food Co.
“Some of them would just be shopping in Portland, and we heard they’d been here, or they’d write to us and ask, ‘How can I order your food online with the border closed?” McCarron, born in British Columbia, said in a recent interview.
In the United States, however, every international shipment of pet food products requires a special health certificate, making it impossible for a small retailer like Portland Pet Food to offer online sales outside of the country.
“We cannot ship to Canada; it is too expensive and we have to obtain these certificates every time we ship. So I had to continue with the distribution.”
Today, thanks in large part to an agreement with Canadian chain Pet Valu, Portland Pet Food is available at more than 500 specialty retailers in Canada, an expansion that equates to roughly 25 percent of the company’s global retail footprint.
McCarron clearly already had expansion on his mind before the pandemic hit. Portland products are already available in Japan and recently signed an agreement for their distribution in China. Korea and Taiwan are next on their list.
But the ongoing ban on nonessential ground travel from Canada to the US, tentatively extended now for a 19 month until October 21, highlighted the importance of gaining shelf space in a part of the world where crossing the border is not so easy anymore. as easy as it was before.
Reference-www.thestar.com