Detatched house prices fall in Toronto; Amazon vice president says he quit over firing of activist employees - Toronto Star

The latest novel coronavirus news from Canada and around the world Tuesday (this file will be updated throughout the day). Web links to longer stories if available.

9 a.m.: For two months, unions for front-line staff, seniors’ advocates and long-term care experts say they continued to sound the alarm in conversations with both the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Long-Term Care.

They say the long-term care sector was overlooked as strained acute care resources were shored up in response to dire international reports of overwhelmed intensive care units.

Meanwhile, the well-known cracks in Ontario’s nursing home system were allowed to become deadly sinkholes, according to experts and front-line staff, as well as allegations made in court.

Read the investigation from the Star’s Alyshah Hasham and Jesse McLean.

8:20 a.m.: It’s not the spring real estate watchers were expecting eight weeks ago. But even as home sales fell through the floor in April, prices held steady in the Toronto area — up 0.1 per cent or $1,000 year over year with an average transaction price of $821,392.

A continued decline in the number of homes listed on the market relative to the number of sales helped stabilize prices in the midst of the unprecedented public health lockdown, said the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB) on Tuesday.

The average price of a detached house in Toronto fell 7.8 per cent to $1.25 million in April, compared to last year. Regionwide, detached homes dipped 3.5 per cent to average $983,630

Read the story from the Star’s Tess Kalinowski.

8 a.m. French scientists say they may have identified a possible case of the new coronavirus dating back to December — about a month before the first cases were officially confirmed in Europe.

In a study published in the International Journal of Microbial Agents, doctors at a hospital north of Paris reviewed retrospective samples of 14 patients treated for atypical pneumonia between early December and mid-January. Among those were the records of Amirouche Hammar, a fishmonger in his 40s from Algeria who has lived in France for years and had no recent travel history.

Hammar told French broadcaster BFM-TV on Tuesday that he drove himself to a hospital emergency unit at 5 a.m. one morning in late December because he felt very sick, with chest pains and breathing difficulties.

7:48 a.m. World stock markets and the price of oil rose on Tuesday as more countries eased restrictions on business and public life, raising hopes for a recovery from a historic economic plunge.

Shares advanced in Paris, London and Hong Kong and Wall Street futures suggested a rise on the open. Markets in Tokyo, Shanghai and Seoul were closed for holidays.

Many European countries that have seen new infections tapering off amid strict social distancing measures and nationwide lockdowns have begun relaxing some restrictions while watching to see whether numbers began to rise again. In Asia, China and South Korea were slowly resuming public events after months of containment efforts.

7:45 a.m. Investigations into four COVID-19 outbreaks at Toronto Western Hospital have identified 19 patients and 46 staff who tested positive for the coronavirus, triggering an “urgent” directive over the weekend that caused hospital disruptions and confusion for medical residents who failed to report for duty on Monday, the Star has learned.

7:34 a.m. India will deploy commercial jets, military transport planes and naval warships to bring back hundreds of thousands of citizens stranded across the world, in what’s set to be the biggest-ever peacetime repatriation exercise in history.

The first phase of the drive is estimated to help about 1.8 million Indian citizens return home, according to the Indian Navy. That far outnumbers the 170,000 people India airlifted from Kuwait in 1990 -- which inspired a Bollywood blockbuster -- and bigger than the 150,000 the U.K. evacuated last year, following the collapse of tour operator Thomas Cook Group Plc.

The plan to evacuate citizens follows India’s move to partially ease movement restrictions in many parts of the world’s second-most populous nation after 40 days of strict stay-at-home orders. Millions of Indians were stuck around the world, from the Gulf to Europe and the U.S., after Prime Minister Narendra Modi imposed the lockdown on March 25 to check the spread of the virus. The outbreak has already infected more than 46,000 in India, and killed almost 1,600.

7:23 a.m. Bank of Montreal anticipates that as much as 80 per cent of its staff — or about 36,000 employees — may adopt new flexible arrangements that blend working from home with going into the office even after the Covid-19 pandemic subsides.

The virus prompted the bank to make a sweeping reappraisal of workplace policies, according to Mona Malone, chief human resources officer. She said the lender expects that 30 per cent to 80 per cent of employees may continue to work from home at least some of the time. The Toronto-based bank employed about 45,000 people as of Jan. 31.

“We’ve been able to maintain continuity of banking services with far more people working outside the office than we ever thought possible,” Malone said Monday in an interview. “We thought it was critical that we were in the office to make something happen, and what we’ve proven through this is that’s actually not the case.”

Chief Executive Officer Darryl White has said “a 2.0 version” of the workplace may include the blended home-and-office arrangements, as big employers worldwide reconfigure offices and routines. Malone said Canadian and U.S. branch employees have “by and large” been going into work during the crisis along with a “small amount” of technology and operations employees, while 95 per cent of those in office towers have been working from home.

7:22 a.m. Pfizer Inc. has administered the first U.S. patients with its experimental vaccines to fight the disease caused by the coronavirus, part of a bid to shave years off of the typical time it takes to develop a new inoculation.

The trials are being conducted at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and the University of Maryland School of Medicine, the drugmaker said Tuesday.“The short, less than four-month time-frame in which we’ve been able to move from preclinical studies to human testing is extraordinary,” Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla said in a statement.

Preclinical studies are what companies do in animals or in the lab before they test vaccines in humans. Drugmakers have been working with regulators to compress development times to stop the spread of the virus, which has infected more than 3.5 million people globally and killed more than 250,000.

New York-based Pfizer is working with BioNTech SE of Germany. The companies started testing the inoculations in patients in Germany in late April. Vaccine trials normally start by looking at safety, but in order to hasten the development of a Covid-19 vaccine, the drugmakers are looking at both safety and the immune-system response from the experimental shots.

7:09 a.m. Thomson Reuters Corp. says it expects revenue to fall in the second quarter and is reducing its expectations for growth this year due to the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The company says total company revenues for the second quarter are expected to decline between one and two per cent, while organic revenues are expected to decline between two and three per cent.

For the full year, Thomson Reuters says it now expects total revenue growth between one and two per cent, while organic revenue growth is expected to be between zero and one per cent. That compared with a forecast in February by the company for total revenue growth between 4.5 and 5.5 per cent and organic revenue growth of between 4.0 and 4.5 per cent.

The updated outlook came as Thomson Reuters, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported a first-quarter profit of $193 million (U.S.) or 39 cents per diluted share, up from $104 million (U.S.) or 20 cents per diluted share a year ago.

6:04 a.m.: The Trump administration is making ever louder pronouncements casting blame on China for the COVID-19 pandemic, aiming to sidestep domestic criticism of the president’s own response, tarnish China’s global reputation and give the U.S. leverage on trade and other aspects of U.S.-China competition.

President Donald Trump has vowed to penalize China for what U.S. officials have increasingly described as a pattern of deceit that denied the world precious time to prepare for the pandemic. The opening salvo isn’t in the form of tariffs or sanctions, but in a one-sided accounting of China’s behaviour that could yank the Chinese lower on the global reputation meter.

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The State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the White House have all launched public efforts in recent days to lay bare what they say is clear evidence that China tried to mask the scale of the outbreak and then refused to provide critical access to U.S. and global scientists that could have saved lives. More than 250,000 people have died globally from COVID-19, including more than 68,000 in the U.S.

5:30 a.m.: China reported only a single new case of coronavirus and no new deaths, marking three weeks since it recorded a COVID-19 fatality.

The National Health Commission said 395 people remained under treatment in hospital, while 949 people were under isolation and observation for having tested positive for the virus but showing no symptoms, or being suspected cases. China has recorded 4,633 deaths from the virus among 82,881 cases, but strict travel restrictions, testing, quarantining and case tracing policies appear to have stemmed the virus’s spread as warm summer arrives in much of the country.

5:25 a.m.: South Korea on Tuesday reported its lowest daily increase in coronavirus cases since Feb. 18, continuing a downward trend as the country restarts professional sports and prepares to reopen schools.

South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday reported three fresh infections and two more virus-related deaths, bringing national totals to 10,804 cases and 254 fatalities.

4:10 a.m. As provinces start to tiptoe toward normalcy by gently lifting restrictions aimed at slowing the spread of COVID-19, a new poll suggests Canadians are largely happy with the pace.

People in most provinces taking steps to reopen were between 60 and 70 per cent supportive of those moves, while 16 to 30 per cent would like to see their government slow down a little.

Some provinces have already begun loosening physical distancing measures put in place as the growth in the number of COVID-19 cases started picking up steam in March.

In Quebec, which has the highest number of COVID-19 cases in Canada, the province is allowing some retail stores to reopen outside of Montreal with an eye to reopen the manufacturing and construction sectors next week. On Monday it pushed back the reopening of non-essential stores in the Montreal area at least another week.

Ontario, with the second-highest number of confirmed cases in the country, is allowing the partial reopening of some seasonal businesses. Manitoba has gone even further, allowing slightly restricted access to libraries, museums, and restaurant patios.

4 a.m.: The Trudeau government is expected to announce Tuesday significant, targeted financial support for farmers hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The announcement will come just as some farmers are making decisions about whether to plant crops and others are considering whether they need to cull their cattle, pigs and poultry because of the reduced capacity of meat processing plants, which have proven particularly vulnerable to the spread of the deadly coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

12:48 a.m.: A Canadian software developer says he has resigned his position as a vice president with Amazon over the firing of employees who he says fought for better COVID-19 protection in the company’s warehouses.

Tim Bray, who says he worked with Amazon Web Services, wrote in a blog post that he “quit in dismay at Amazon firing of two whistleblowers who were making noise about warehouse employees frightened of COVID-19.”

Bray says some workers, who had been active with a group of Amazon employees pushing the company for leadership on the global climate emergency, were contacted by Amazon warehouse staff concerned about what they considered lack of coronavirus protection.

He says the employees with the climate group responded by internally promoting a petition and an April 16 video call with guest activist Naomi Klein, and made an announcement using an internal mailing list.

Bray says two workers who were leaders with the climate group were immediately fired.

Monday 8 p.m.: Premier Doug Ford is calling for a national strategy on contact tracing.

Ford says he spoke with Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland on Monday about the matter and planned to make the case to his provincial counterparts this week.

“We need a national plan for contact tracing. Right now each individual province is doing it, but we need a national plan, to work with the federal government and all the provinces, the 10 provinces and the three territories,” said Ford.

Monday 6 p.m.: Ontario’s regional health units are reporting a total of 19,241 confirmed or probable cases of COVID-19, including 1,427 deaths, according to the Star’s latest count.

Those numbers represent a large jump from the same time Sunday evening, however, the size of that increase can be attributed partly to a change in case reporting in Toronto that led to a larger than normal reported increase there Monday evening.

At its daily news conference, the city reported another 311 new cases and 51 more deaths since its last report, but because the city did not release an update Sunday it was not possible to calculate the increase over the last 24 hours.

Meanwhile, the daily growth in new cases has continued to slow over the last 48 hours. Since late Saturday, Ontario has seen another 781 cases, or a daily increase of about two per cent over two days.

Read more of Monday’s coverage here.

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2020-05-05 13:00:11Z
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