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.
7:40 am: The pandemic had just gripped Toronto when our attitudes about our living spaces changed dramatically. Downtown residents were moving to the suburbs and beyond. Even suburbanites were moving to smaller centers in search of more space and affordability, a move some observers called “the great migration.”
Some were chased away by job loss and fear of crowds. But amid the isolation and uncertainty, others saw an opportunity to change their lives.
In the summer of 2020, Ana and Rob Stephenson, ages 48 and 49, were among those who saw the opportunity to change commuting through the community and invest more time with their family.
The Star spoke to Ana at the time, and the couple with their daughter Addison, now 10, had retired from their Oakville home to live full-time in their much smaller Haliburton cabin.
Ana, who worked from home before COVID-19, continued to work there and Rob began looking for a new position so that he could relocate to the north of the city permanently.
They expected to return to Oakville that September and began preparing their home for sale.
But when the Star returned to consult with Ana more than a year later, the family’s path had once again deviated. They still lived in Oakville and life had come in with a new job in town for Rob that made living in Haliburton impractical.
Read the full story here: A family fled to a cabin. Another woman packed for the Rockies. As the pandemic progresses, are those who are part of the ‘great migration’ happy?
7:30 am: It was a once-in-a-lifetime theatrical experience for those who attended the reopening of “Come From Away” on December 15 at the Royal Alexandra Theater in Toronto. Following a 21-month pandemic hiatus, the hit Canadian musical returned to an exuberant crowd who rose to their feet to a rousing standing ovation before the cast even spoke a word.
“The 15th was the greatest experience of my life on stage,” said actor Ali Momen, who played Kevin J./Ali and others in the musical.
The reopening demonstrated the resilience of the city’s battered theater industry in the face of ongoing cancellations, postponements, show closings, and other COVID-related struggles. In the first year of the pandemic alone, Toronto’s performing arts industry lost more than $ 900 million in revenue.
Seven days later, unbeknownst to the cast and crew, the show would host its final performance on December 22. An outbreak of COVID-19 within the company led Mirvish Productions to cancel four shows over the Christmas weekend.
Production was scheduled to resume on December 28. He never did.
Read the full story here: ‘Come From Away’ closed after reopening for just seven days. Its producers blame the lack of government support
7:30 am: The rise in COVID-19 cases in the United States is proving a disturbing but well-known fact: You can still become infected with the coronavirus despite being fully vaccinated, even more so with the highly transmissible Omicron variant.
Infection is still possible even among the boosted, but how does a positive COVID-19 test affect those who are fully vaccinated and have not yet received an additional prick?
You will definitely have to wait a bit, although the specific time depends on your preferences, experts say.
Read the full story here.
5 am: The UK is testing various strategies to limit the impact of record COVID-19 cases on healthcare and other sectors, while trying to stay true to its promise to avoid further lockdowns.
Among the latest measures, the Boris Johnson government is developing contingency plans to help businesses and supply chains avoid disruptions caused by increased staff absences, the Financial Times reported.
Private companies have been asked to test the plans in the worst-case scenario of up to 25% absences from the workforce, according to the newspaper.
COVID-related absences among hospital staff rose nearly two-thirds between Dec. 26 and Dec. 31, the Times reported Sunday, citing figures from the National Health Service.
Regionally, the situation is even worse, with parts of a London hospital having to close because half of the nursing staff were ill, the newspaper reported. Health services personnel have also had difficulty accessing COVID tests.
There were more than 162,000 positive tests for COVID-19 in England on Saturday, roughly four times the daily level since early December, extending a series of record levels linked to the highly contagious Omicron variant.
Previously: Various parts of Canada ushered in 2022 by documenting record COVID-19 case counts after a quiet New Year’s Eve marred by stricter public health restrictions and fears of falling ill in the latest wave of the pandemic.
Quebec, Ontario, and Newfoundland and Labrador all recorded new spikes in their daily COVID-19 counts, in some cases continuing a rapidly growing streak of infection and beating previous records set just 24 hours earlier.
Health officials in Quebec reported 17,122 new cases of COVID-19 on New Years Day, marking the fifth consecutive day that a record number of new infections have been reported in the province. It also recorded 12 more COVID-19-related deaths and 98 more people in the hospital, for a total of 1,161 patients.
Quebec residents called in the new year under a newly instituted curfew across the province. The rules went into effect on Friday and required everyone to be home by 10 p.m. M. And that they stay there until 5 a.m. M.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association condemned the new measures, saying the government has presented no evidence that a curfew will work to slow the spread of COVID-19.
“A curfew is particularly problematic because it is intended to empower police officers to detain and question people simply for being outside at certain times of the day,” said Cara Zwibel, the association’s director of fundamental freedoms and general counsel. interim, in a statement Friday night. “The burden of these police arrests is likely to fall disproportionately on racialized people and other marginalized groups.”
In Ontario, meanwhile, public health officials reported a staggering 18,445 new cases on Saturday, beating Friday’s record of 16,713 new diagnoses. Ontario is one of several jurisdictions that has changed its availability of polymerase chain reaction tests for COVID-19, and as a result, public health has warned that Saturday’s figures represent an “understatement.”
Twelve more Ontario residents have died from COVID-19 since Friday, and 85 more people are now in the hospital, according to data released by Public Health Ontario. The data do not include the total number of hospitalizations.
Reference-www.thestar.com