The latest coronavirus news from Canada and around the world on Saturday. This file will be updated throughout the day. Web links to longer stories if available.
8:12 am: Collège Boréal partnered with Public Health Sudbury and Districts to host a mobile COVID-19 vaccination clinic on its main campus on Thursday.
The clinic was open to students, staff, and visitors seeking to receive their first or second dose of an mRNA vaccine.
The university said it welcomed the clinic as part of its efforts to ensure everyone has a safe start to the 2021-22 academic year.
As part of Collège Boréal’s mandatory vaccination policy, all campus attendees must have received at least their first dose of the vaccine by September 7.
“We believe that it is very important for students and staff to have a safe environment in which to be, work and learn, so we wanted to make sure that vaccinations were mandatory,” Patrick Lafontaine, director of student services at Collège Boréal.
“The response we have received has been very positive. We had a lot of questions about the vaccination clinic on the first day of class, so we gave a lot of information and we hope for good attendance for the clinic today ”.
The Collège Boréal announced that it will require full vaccination for anyone wishing to access its campuses and facilities across the province in August.
8:11 am: As of September 10, there are 110 new COVID-19 cases in Northern Health, bringing active cases to 782.
There have also been two new deaths in the last 24 hours in the Northern Health region, for a total of nine deaths across the province, according to an information bulletin released by the provincial Health Ministry on September 10.
There are currently 39 people hospitalized in the Northern Health region with 15 in intensive care, according to BC CDC data.
BC is reporting 820 new COVID-19 cases, including 11 PID-related cases, for a total of 173,158 cases in the province.
The ministry statement also indicated that between September 2 and 8, people who were not fully vaccinated accounted for 78.4% of the cases and from August 26 to September 26. 8, represented 86.6% of hospitalizations.
8:10 am: Several hundred people line up every morning, starting before dawn, in a grassy area outside Nairobi’s largest hospital in hopes of receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. Sometimes the line runs smoothly, while other days the staff tell them that nothing is available and that they should come back tomorrow.
On the other side of the world, in a church in Atlanta, two workers with many doses of vaccines waited hours Wednesday for someone to arrive, wasting time listening to music from a laptop. During a six-hour period, only one person walked through the door.
The dramatic contrast highlights the great disparity around the world. In wealthier countries, people can often choose from several available vaccines, enter a site close to their homes, and receive an injection in minutes. Emerging clinics, like the one in Atlanta, bring vaccines to rural areas and urban neighborhoods, but they typically get very few recipients.
In the developing world, supply is limited and uncertain. Just over 3% of people in Africa have been fully vaccinated, and health officials and citizens often have little idea what will be available overnight. More vaccines have been flowing in recent weeks, but the director of the World Health Organization in Africa said Thursday that the continent will receive 25% fewer doses than expected by the end of the year, in part due to the launch of vaccines. reinforcement in richer counties such as the United States.
8:10 am: Darkness loomed for Natasha Blunt long before Hurricane Ida left Louisiana without power.
Months after the pandemic, he faced eviction from his New Orleans apartment. He lost his job in a banquet hall. She suffered two strokes. And she struggled to help her 5-year-old grandson keep up with school work at home.
Like nearly a fifth of the state’s population, disproportionately represented by black women and residents, Blunt, 51, lives below the poverty line and the economic consequences of the pandemic pushed her to the brink. . With the help of a grassroots donor and legal aid group, she moved to Chalmette, a few miles from New Orleans, and tried to settle into a two-bedroom apartment. Using a cane and taking a large number of medications since his strokes, he was unable to return to work. But federal benefits kept the food in the refrigerator for the most part.
Then came Hurricane Ida.
8:08 am: At a taxi rank next to a bustling market in Kampala, the Ugandan capital, traders simply cross a street or two, get shot in the arm, and rush back to work.
Until this week, vaccination centers were mainly located in hospitals in this East African country that faced a brutal increase in COVID-19 earlier this year.
Now, more than a dozen tents have been set up in crowded areas to facilitate vaccination in Kampala, as health authorities join the Red Cross to administer more than 120,000 doses due to expire at the end of September.
“All this we could have done before, but they did not assure us of the availability of vaccines,” said Dr. Misaki Wayengera, who leads a team of scientists advising authorities on the response to the pandemic, talking about vaccination sites in areas from the center. “Right now we are getting more vaccines and we have to implement them as much as possible.”
In addition to the 128,000 doses of AstraZeneca donated by Norway at the end of August, the UK donated nearly 300,000 doses last month. China recently donated 300,000 doses of its Sinovac vaccine and a batch of 647,000 doses of Moderna donated by the United States arrived in Uganda on Monday.
Saturday 8:05 am: President Joe Biden’s aggressive push to demand that millions of American workers get vaccinated against the coronavirus is met by a wall of resistance from Republican leaders who threaten everything from lawsuits to civil disobedience, plunging the country deeper into culture wars than have worsened since the start of the pandemic.
In South Carolina, Gov. Henry McMaster says he will fight “to the gates of hell to protect the freedom and livelihood of all South Carolinians.” South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, a potential presidential candidate for 2024, says she is preparing a lawsuit. And JD Vance, a conservative running for a US Senate seat in Ohio, is asking companies to ignore mandates he describes as “Washington’s attempt to intimidate and coerce citizens.”
“Only massive civil disobedience will save us from Joe Biden’s naked authoritarianism,” says Vance.
Biden hardly backs down. On a visit to a school on Friday, he accused governors of being “arrogant” about the health of young Americans, and when asked about enemies who would present legal challenges, he replied, “Do it.”
Read the coronavirus news on Friday.
Reference-www.thestar.com