Today’s coronavirus news: Canadian economy added 953,000 jobs in June, unemployment rate falls as pandemic restrictions ease; WHO concedes airborne spread indoors is possible - Toronto Star

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

8:40 a.m.: Statistics Canada says the economy added nearly one million jobs in June as businesses forced closed by the pandemic moved to reopen.

The agency says 953,000 jobs were added last month including 488,000 full-time and 465,000 part-time positions.

The unemployment rate fell to 12.3 per cent in June after hitting a record-high of 13.7 per cent in May.

The average economist estimate for June had been for an addition of 700,000 jobs and the unemployment rate to fall to 12.0 per cent, according to financial data firm Refinitiv

7:55 a.m.: Premier Doug Ford will make multiple public appearances at businesses today to thank Ontario workers for their service during the pandemic.

Ford’s day will start at a skylight manufacturing company in Woodbridge, Ont., where the premier is set to make an announcement alongside Vic Fedeli, minister of economic development.

The premier’s daily press conference is set to take place at the manufacturing company.

He’ll then tour a Toronto-based textile company that retooled its facility to start producing face masks.

The premier will then visit a bakery in Toronto’s west end to serve customers through a take window built by the shop.

Ford’s last event is scheduled at 4 p.m. when he’ll tour a dairy and food plant that ramped up production to meet customer needs during the COVID-19 lockdown.

6:20 a.m.: The coronavirus storm has arrived in South Africa, but in the overflowing COVID-19 wards the sound is less of a roar than a rasp.

Oxygen is already low in hospitals at the new epicentre of the country’s outbreak, Gauteng province, home to the power centres of Johannesburg and the capital, Pretoria.

Health Minister Zweli Mkhize, visiting a hospital Friday, said authorities are working with industry to address the strained oxygen supply and divert more to health facilities.

Some of the hospital’s patients spilled into heated tents in the parking lot. They lay under thick blankets in the middle of winter in the Southern Hemisphere, with a cold front arriving this weekend and temperatures expected to dip below freezing.

South Africa overnight posted another record daily high of confirmed cases, 13,674, as Africa’s most developed country is a new global hot spot with 238,339 cases overall. More than a third are in Gauteng.

6:17 a.m.: Australia’s Victoria state on Friday reported the new daily record of 288 coronavirus cases, which also reflects a record number of tests exceeding 37,500.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that the number of citizens and permanent residents allowed to return to Australia each week will be reduced by more than 4,000 from next week.

Sydney, Australia’s largest city, has been carrying a disproportionate burden of hotel quarantine that is currently paid for by the New South Wales state government.

Victoria, to the south, has banned international arrivals after breaches of hotel quarantine in Melbourne were blamed for Australia’s only widespread transmission of COVID-19.

Victoria’s Chief Helath Officer Breet Sutton said “certainly, 288 new cases today is a pretty ugly number.”

6:16 a.m.: Two World Health Organization experts were heading to the Chinese capital on Friday to lay the groundwork for an investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.

An animal health expert and an epidemiologist will meet Chinese counterparts in Beijing to work out logistics, places to visit and the participants for a WHO-led international mission, the UN organization said.

A major issue will be to “look at whether or not it jumped from species to human, and what species it jumped from,” WHO spokesperson Dr. Margaret Harris said at a briefing in Geneva.

Scientists believe the virus may have originated in bats and was transmitted to another mammal such as a civet cat or an armadillo-like pangolin before being passed on to people.

6:15 a.m.: Statistics Canada is set this morning to give a snapshot of the job market as it was last month as pandemic-related restrictions eased and reopenings widened.

Economists expect the report will show a bump in employment as a result, further recouping some of the approximately three million jobs lost over March and April.

Financial data firm Refinitiv says the average economist estimate for June is for employment to increase by 700,000 jobs and the unemployment rate to fall to 12.0 per cent.

The unemployment rate in May was a record-high 13.7 per cent, a far turn from the record low of 5.5 per cent recorded in January.

The Bank of Canada and federal government say the worst of the economic pain from the pandemic is behind the country, but Canada will face high unemployment and low growth until 2021.

The economic outlook released by the Liberal government Wednesday forecasted the unemployment rate to be 9.8 per cent for the calendar year, dropping to 7.8 per cent next year based on forecasts by 13 private sector economists.

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4 a.m.: The latest numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Canada as of 4 a.m. ET on July 10, 2020:

There are 106,805 confirmed cases in Canada.

-Quebec: 56,216 confirmed (including 5,609 deaths, 25,616 resolved)

-Ontario: 36,348 confirmed (including 2,703 deaths, 31,977 resolved)

-Alberta: 8,519 confirmed (including 161 deaths, 7,774 resolved)

-British Columbia: 3,028 confirmed (including 186 deaths, 2,667 resolved)

-Nova Scotia: 1,066 confirmed (including 63 deaths, 999 resolved)

-Saskatchewan: 813 confirmed (including 15 deaths, 750 resolved)

-Manitoba: 314 confirmed (including 7 deaths, 314 resolved), 11 presumptive

-Newfoundland and Labrador: 261 confirmed (including 3 deaths, 258 resolved)

-New Brunswick: 166 confirmed (including 2 deaths, 163 resolved)

-Prince Edward Island: 33 confirmed (including 27 resolved)

-Repatriated Canadians: 13 confirmed (including 13 resolved)

-Yukon: 11 confirmed (including 11 resolved)

-Northwest Territories: 5 confirmed (including 5 resolved)

-Nunavut: No confirmed cases, 1 presumptive

Total: 106,805 (12 presumptive, 106,793 confirmed including 8,749 deaths, 70,574 resolved)

Thursday 3 p.m.: The World Health Organization is acknowledging the possibility that COVID-19 might be spread in the air under certain conditions — after more than 200 scientists urged the agency to do so.

In an open letter published this week in a journal, two scientists from Australia and the U.S. wrote that studies have shown “beyond any reasonable doubt that viruses are released during exhalation, talking and coughing in microdroplets small enough to remain aloft in the air.”

The researchers, along with more than 200 others, appealed for national and international authorities, including WHO, to adopt more stringent protective measures.

WHO has long dismissed the possibility that the coronavirus is spread in the air except for certain risky medical procedures, such as when patients are first put on breathing machines.

In a change to its previous thinking, WHO noted on Thursday that studies evaluating COVID-19 outbreaks in restaurants, choir practices and fitness classes suggested the virus might have been spread in the air.

Airborne spread “particularly in specific indoor locations, such as crowded and inadequately ventilated spaces over a prolonged period of time with infected persons cannot be ruled out,” WHO said.

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2020-07-10 12:33:45Z
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