Today’s coronavirus news: Ontario reports 2,316 new cases of COVID-19 and 25 more deaths; Initial packages of the Moderna Inc. vaccine ship out in the United States - Toronto Star

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

10:37 a.m.: Ontario is reporting 2,316 new cases of COVID-19 and 25 more deaths this Sunday morning. It's the sixth consecutive day the province has registered more than 2,000 new infections.

Health Minister Christine Elliott says case numbers include 486 in Toronto, 468 in Peel, 326 in Tork Region, 151 in Windsor-Essex County and 128 in Niagara.

All of those regions are currently under lockdown due to rising case counts, except for Niagara, which is moving to the red alert level of the province's pandemic plan tomorrow.

The province is also expected to announce more health measures on Monday following a weekend of emergency talks.

Provincial data also shows 875 people are currently in hospital as a result of COVID-19, with 261 in intensive care and 156 on ventilators.

Elliott says more than 69,400 tests have been completed since the last daily report.

10:35 a.m.: When Eileen Carroll's daughter tested positive for the coronavirus, Rhode Island health officials called with the results, then told her to notify anyone her daughter might have been around. Contact tracers, she was told, were simply too overwhelmed to do it.

That's also why tracers didn't call to warn the family that it had been exposed in the first place, said Carroll, of Warwick, Rhode Island. Luckily, she said, the relative with COVID-19 they had been around at Thanksgiving already alerted them.

“They said, ‘We have 500 people a day and we cannot keep up with this,'" Carroll said.

It's the same story across the U.S., as state and local health departments ask people who test positive to warn friends, family and co-workers themselves because a catastrophic surge in infections has made it difficult or impossible to keep up with the calls considered critical to controlling outbreaks.

Health officials say do-it-yourself tracing is not ideal, but as infections and hospitalizations soar, it's likely the most effective way to reach people who may be at risk.

Over 16.5 million people in the U.S. have been infected and more than 300,000 have died, and officials fear transmission will only get worse as people gather for the holidays.

Some health departments aren't being informed of infections for several days, making it impossible to call at least 75 per cent of a person's contacts within 24 hours of a positive test, which experts say is necessary to control outbreaks. What's more, many people won't pick up the phone or refuse to answer questions when tracers call. Sometimes, there are simply too many positive tests to call everyone.

“If you don’t have the bandwidth to keep up, then you have to make strategic decisions ... and I think it’s a smart move,” Emily Gurley, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said of asking people to warn their own contacts.

10:34 a.m.: Initial shipments of the second COVID-19 vaccine authorized in the U.S. left a distribution centre Sunday, a desperately needed boost as the nation works to bring the coronavirus pandemic under control.

The trucks left the factory in the Memphis area with the vaccine developed by Moderna Inc. and the National Institutes of Health. The much-needed shots are expected to be given starting Monday, just three days after the Food and Drug Administration authorized their emergency rollout.

10:07 a.m.: As the coronavirus spread throughout the U.S., bigotry toward Asian Americans was not far behind, fueled by the news that COVID-19 first appeared in China.

Some initial evidence suggested the virus began in bats, which infected another animal that may have spread it to people at one of Wuhan, China’s “wet markets.” Such markets sell fresh meat, fish and vegetables, and some also sell live animals, such as chickens, that are butchered on site to ensure freshness for consumers.

The information quickly got distorted in the U.S., spurring racist memes on social media that portrayed Chinese people as bat eaters responsible for spreading the virus, and reviving century-old tropes about Asian food being dirty. Fueling the fire, President Donald Trump repeatedly referred to COVID-19 as “the China virus.”

“That old-school rhetoric that we eat bats, dogs and rats — that racism is still alive and well," said Clarence Kwan, creator of the anti-racist cooking zine “Chinese Protest Recipes.” The speed with which such false stereotypes resurfaced during the pandemic is "a reflection of how little progress we’ve made,” Kwan said.

In the Wuhan market where the virus is believed to possibly have originated, vendors also advertised wildlife for sale. Of the 33 samples from the market that tested positive for the coronavirus, officials say 31 were from the area where wildlife booths were concentrated. But wildlife and other “exotic” animals are not part of the modern mainstream Asian diet, either in Asian countries or in the U.S.

All of the misinformation has had serious consequences.

10:06 a.m.: Fear of contracting COVID-19 in hospitals or doctors' offices has prompted some moms-to-be to choose to take on midwives and have their babies at home, midwifery groups say.

A recent survey and reports from midwifery practices indicate that a pronounced uptick in women interested in home births began as the pandemic took hold in the spring.

One of them was Madeleine Shaw, of Victoria, who was 34 weeks pregnant in March and on track to have her baby in hospital with a doctor assisting. However, the prospect of contracting COVID-19 prompted a relatively last-minute switch to a home birth.

"Birth and certainly your first time is already something riddled with unknowns and anxieties for lots of people, and to put a pandemic on top of it was the icing on the cake," Shaw said. "It's scary now but it was really frightening then, because we knew so little at the time."

Shaw, it appears, was not alone in her concerns.

In a survey of its members last month, the Midwives Association of B.C. found 89 per cent of those responding reported more women asking about the home birth option between March and November compared to inquiries made before that period.

Almost 40 per cent described the increased interest in homebirths as moderate or large.

In Ontario, a similar pattern emerged, said Jasmin Tecson, president of the Ontario Association of Midwives. Reports from across the province indicate more interest in both midwifery services and having babies in a non-hospital setting, she said.

"We have noticed a distinct increase in people choosing home or birth centre instead of hospital," said Tecson, who has a midwifery practice in Toronto. "Practices on average, anecdotally, are reporting a planned (non-hospital birth) rate that's roughly double."

There's little doubt, she said, the uptick has been related to COVID-19 fears, and the spike has been noted in the newly pregnant as well as among later-stage pregnancies.

8:26 a.m.: Workers on Sunday began packaging shipments of the second COVID-19 vaccine authorized in the U.S., a desperately needed boost to efforts to bring the coronavirus pandemic under control.

Employees at a factory in the Memphis area were boxing up the vaccine developed by Moderna Inc. and the National Institutes of Health. The much-needed shots are expected to be given starting Monday, just three days after the Food and Drug Administration authorized their emergency rollout.

Later Sunday, an expert committee will debate who should be next in line for early doses of the Moderna vaccine and a similar one from Pfizer Inc. and Germany’s BioNTech. Pfizer’s shots were first shipped out a week ago and started being used the next day, kicking off the nation’s biggest vaccination drive.

Public health experts say the shots — and others in the pipeline — are the only way to stop a virus that has been spreading wildly. Nationwide, more than 219,000 people per day on average test positive for the virus, which has killed more than 314,000 in the U.S. and nearly 1.7 million worldwide.

The Pfizer and Moderna shots shipped so far and going out over the next few weeks are nearly all going to health care workers and residents of long-term care homes, based on the advice of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

That panel meets Sunday to debate who should get the doses available after those early shots are given.

There won’t be enough shots for the general population until spring, so doses will be rationed at least for the next several months.

8:07 a.m.: Before she picked up the tiny glass vial, Tamara Booth Rumsey paused and took a short steadying breath.

Though the registered pharmacy technician had handled thousands of medications in her 30-year career, and the steps to prepare the vaccine were acutely familiar, Booth Rumsey knew she was experiencing an extraordinary moment.

This would be the first COVID-19 vaccine administered in Ontario. The vial in front of her signified the beginning of the end of a pandemic virus still coursing across the country, sickening thousands and killing hundreds of Canadians every week.

“Running through my head were the months and months of this pandemic and the great toll it had taken,” she said. “The sheer significance of preparing the first vial was not lost on me.”

Five Toronto health-care workers were the first to be injected with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on Monday at the University Health Network. Since then, a total of 1,500 others have been vaccinated and some 299 vials safely discarded.

But the first tiny glass vial has been kept safe.

Read the full story by Megan Ogilvie.

8:06 a.m.: Rookie cabinet minister Anita Anand fumed as the Conservative leader of the Opposition accused the Liberal government throughout the fall of signing bad deals that “put Canada at the back of the line” for COVID-19 vaccines.

From late October onward, Erin O’Toole had shifted from attacks over rapid tests to hammering what he said was a failure to ensure timely delivery of vaccines to Canadians.

No vaccines had yet been approved anywhere in the world.

But behind the scenes, Anand knew there was no way Canada would be last, even though the prime minister admitted Canada’s own lack of domestic production might mean a wait.

Anand had already nailed down contracts for seven of the most promising vaccine candidates. And while nobody knew “which one would be first to cross the finish line,” she said she was not worried. Or pressured.

But she saw politics at play, and says the criticism of all the opposition parties was “unhelpful … because of the misinformation that they were continually expressing and providing to the Canadian public.”

Anand, a former professor who taught contract law at the University of Toronto, is all about details — “accurate information and certainty.” She doesn’t announce vaccine contracts until the ink is dry.

“I agree the opposition has a role to ensure accountability of the governing party,” she said in an exclusive interview with the Star. “But the continued reference to Canada being at the back of the line was clearly wrong and the information that they spread was false.”

Read the full story by Tonda MacCharles.

8:05 a.m.: Canada’s top public health officer has been a model of stoicism through the first year of COVID-19, but Dr. Theresa Tam still got a little choked up last week when the first Canadians were inoculated with a COVID-19 vaccine.

“That was pretty emotional,” said Tam, in an interview reflecting back on the year many would like to forget.

“I think everyone was touched by those images.”

It has been just 355 days since Tam saw the first emails warning of a pneumonia cluster in the Chinese city of Wuhan that had no known origin. Within a week those infections were connected to a novel coronavirus, which causes what we now know as COVID-19.

In a year-end interview with The Canadian Press, Tam said she is in awe that the world was able to develop, test, produce, ship and now inject a vaccine less than a year later.

“That’s never been seen before in the history of public health,” she said. “So I think it is emotional for the perspective of just, just that alone how incredible a scientific achievement that was.”

8:03 a.m.: Thousands of people lined up for coronavirus tests in a province near Bangkok on Sunday, as Thai authorities scrambled to contain an outbreak of the virus that has infected nearly 700 people.

Triple lines of mainly migrant workers stretched for around 100 metres in one location alone, at Mahachai in Samut Sakhon province, as health officials in mobile units methodically took nasal swabs. There were three locations in total in the area.

Nearby, razor wire and police guards blocked access to the Klang Koong, or Central Shrimp, seafood market — one of Thailand’s largest — and its associated housing, the epicentre of the new cluster.

Thailand’s Disease Control Department said Sunday that they found 141 more cases linked to the market outbreak. On Saturday, the department reported 548 cases, Thailand’s biggest daily spike, sending shock waves through a country that has seen only a small number of infections over the past several months due to strict border and quarantine controls.

The new outbreak has been traced to a 67-year-old shrimp vendor at the seafood market.

Health officials say most of those who have been infected are migrant workers from Myanmar. The workers live close to the market in crowded accommodations, raising fears that the virus could spread exponentially.

8:02 a.m.: The Netherlands is banning flights from the U.K. for at least the rest of the year in an attempt to make sure that a new strain of coronavirus that is sweeping across southern England does not reach its shores.

The ban came into effect Sunday morning and the government said it was reacting to tougher measures imposed in London and surrounding areas on Saturday by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The Netherlands said it will assess “with other European Union nations the possibilities to contain the import of the virus from the United Kingdom.”

Johnson said a fast-moving new variant of the virus that is 70 per cent more transmissible than existing strains appears to be driving the rapid spread of new infections in London and southern England.

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“There’s no evidence to suggest it is more lethal or causes more severe illness,” the prime minister stressed, or that vaccines will be less effective against it.

The Dutch government is already strongly advising its citizens not to travel unless absolutely necessary.

8:01 a.m.: Health officials are racing to contact those who travelled aboard a United Airlines plane after a passenger exhibiting coronavirus symptoms experienced a “medical emergency” during a flight from Orlando, Florida, to Los Angeles earlier this week and subsequently died.

United Airlines flight 591 was forced to divert to New Orleans on Monday when a man aboard the aircraft became suddenly ill, according to USA Today. He was dropped off at an area hospital, where he later died, before the plane continued on to California.

United is working with the government to notify passengers who may have been exposed.

“At the time of the diversion, we were informed he had suffered a cardiac arrest, so passengers were given the option to take a later flight or continue on with their travel plans,” a United Airlines spokesperson said in a statement on Friday.

“Now that the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) has contacted us directly, we are sharing requested information with the agency so they can work with local health officials to conduct outreach to any customer the CDC believes may be at risk for possible exposure or infection.”

8 a.m.: French President Emmanuel Macron is in stable condition after testing positive for the coronavirus, the Elysée Palace said on Saturday.

The Elysee said in a statement that test results on the president’s condition were reassuring, though he is still suffering from a cough, muscle pain and fatigue.

The presidential office confirmed on Thursday that the 42-year-old Macron had tested positive for the coronavirus. He is isolating himself in the presidential residence La Laterne, on edge of the Versailles palace gardens.

Macron has promised to give daily updates on his condition.

7:58 a.m.: As the White House celebrated the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines and some lawmakers lined up for doses, one Texas congressman raised the spectre of coercion that doesn’t exist and isn’t under discussion.

“Would you feel comfortable taking a COVID-19 vaccine if the federal government required registration and contact tracing in order to receive it?” freshman Rep. Lance Gooden, a Dallas-area Republican, asks constituents in an email newsletter.

It sounds scary. Mandatory registration suggests that shirkers could be barred from workplaces, grocery stores, airports and schools. Mandatory contact tracing sounds like the government can demand a list of friends and family, or require a tracking app on your cellphone.

But that’s not what’s happening.

Texas and other states have had vaccine registries for decades. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services are creating a federal clearing house to track the rollout, ensure that patients are getting two doses, assess safety and spot geographic gaps.

States and counties would provide data they already collect. And they can report it using numerical identifiers rather than names.

“There is not a federal vaccine registry,” said Mary Beth Kurilo, the senior director of health informatics at the American Immunization Registry. “There obviously is a big need for national level surveillance of what’s happening with COVID vaccination.”

“They’re looking at where the doses are distributed and allocated. And then they’re matching that up with the administered dose information that’s coming in from registries,” she said. “The identity pieces aren’t tied together.”

7:57 a.m.: A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory panel voted Saturday to recommend Moderna Inc.’s coronavirus shot for people 18 and older, paving the way for the second COVID-19 vaccine to be administered in the U.S.

Members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted 11-0 to recommend the shot, with three abstaining because of conflicts of interest. The advisers cast the vote in an emergency meeting Saturday after the Food and Drug Administration authorized use of Moderna’s shot Friday.

The recommendations are key to helping vaccine providers understand best practices for administering the vaccine. CDC Director Robert Redfield must sign off on the group’s decisions before they are made final. States, a handful of large cities and territories are slated to soon receive some of the 5.9 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine that the federal government plans to initially release.

Moderna’s vaccine, the second to be authorized for emergency use in the U.S. this month, will be introduced amid more than 200,000 new daily coronavirus cases being reported and record hospitalizations.

“I was very eager to put forth this nomination for a second vaccine that could be life-saving, especially in light of the fact that we are seeing an average 2,600 deaths a day,” said Lynn Bahta, committee member and immunization specialist at the Minnesota Department of Health. “This is horrendous.”

7:56 a.m.: With intensive care units full and projections showing big increases in hospitalizations through New Year’s Day, Southern California’s medical system is faced with the prospect of not being able to provide critical medical care to everyone who needs it, which would significantly increase the chances of patients dying as they wait for help.

Already, hospitals are juggling resources to keep up, placing the overflow of ICU patients in other parts of hospitals not designed for them, clearing out critical care wards of patients who can survive elsewhere and in some cases keeping patients on ambulances for as long as eight hours until space is available.

But much more wrenching choices could be ahead as the COVID-19 surge shows no signs of slowing down, and there is little hope for the arrival of an army of additional medical professionals who can greatly expand intensive care unit availability through the end of the year.

Many hospitals are preparing for the possibility of rationing care in the coming weeks as the number of patients exceeds their staffs’ abilities to care for them. A document obtained by The Times outlining how to allocate resources in a crisis situation was recently circulated among doctors at the four hospitals run by Los Angeles County.

The guidelines call for a shift in mindset that is unfamiliar to many medical providers.

Instead of trying everything to save a patient, their goal during a crisis is to save as many patients as possible, meaning those less likely to survive will not receive the same level of care they would have otherwise. Doctors will no longer be pulling out all the stops to save a life but instead strategizing about how to keep as many people as possible from perishing.

7:54 a.m.: Top congressional lawmakers struck a late-night agreement on the last major obstacle to a COVID-19 economic relief package costing nearly $1 trillion, clearing the way for votes as early as Sunday.

A Democratic aide said in an email that an agreement had been reached late Saturday and that compromise language was being finalized to seal a deal to be unveiled on Sunday.

The breakthrough involved a fight over Federal Reserve emergency powers that was defused by an odd couple: the Senate’s top Democrat and a senior conservative Republican.

“We’re getting very close, very close,” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N. Y., said earlier Saturday as he spent much of the day going back and forth with GOP Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. Toomey had been pressing a provision to close down Fed lending facilities that Democrats and the White House said was too broadly worded and would have tied the hands of the incoming Biden administration.

The COVID-19 legislation has been held up after months of disfunction, posturing and bad faith, but talks turned serious in December as lawmakers on both sides finally faced the deadline of acting before exiting Washington for Christmas.

The bill, lawmakers and aides say, would establish a temporary $300 per week supplemental jobless benefits and $600 direct stimulus payments to most Americans, along with a fresh round of subsidies for hard-hit businesses and funding for schools, health care providers, and renters facing eviction.

Schumer said he hoped both the House and Senate would vote on the measure Sunday. That would take more co-operation than the Senate can usually muster, but a government shutdown deadline loomed at midnight Sunday and all sides were eager to leave for Christmas.

Sunday 7:49 a.m.: Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine began rolling out in limited doses this week, and U.S. government officials have been among the first to receive vaccinations in attempts to boost confidence and prove that the shots are safe and effective.

Vice President Mike Pence and top congressional leaders, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, posted photos of their vaccinations on Friday.

Following announcements, some social media users made claims that Pelosi, D-Calif., did not actually receive the shot based on an image that purportedly shows an orange cap over the syringe.

“How do you use a syringe with a cap still on?” one user wrote in a Dec. 18 Facebook post that includes three images of Pelosi’s vaccination; two of the photos appear to be close-ups of the larger image showing the injection. The post has over 1,400 shares.

Other users shared the same or similar images, some with a caption on top that reads, “Pelosi got the covid vaccine. Can someone explain how effective the vaccine is if you leave the cap on the needle You aren’t fooling no one.”

USA TODAY reached out to the users for comment.

Pelosi was vaccinated

Pelosi announced in a press release that she would be getting coronavirus vaccine after being informed that members of the House and Senate are eligible under government continuity guidelines.

The House speaker was given the first dose of the vaccine on Dec. 18, USA TODAY reported.

“Today, with confidence in science & at the direction of the Office of the Attending Physician, I received the COVID-19 vaccine,” Pelosi tweeted, along with photos of her receiving the shot. “As the vaccine is being distributed, we must all continue mask wearing, social distancing & other science-based steps to save lives & crush the virus.”

Many photos document the entire process of Pelosi receiving the vaccine and her posing in front of reporters with her COVID-19 vaccination record card.

The orange “cap” seen in the images may be a plastic safety covering on the syringe that flips over the needle after use. In the images in the viral posts, only the orange piece of the syringe can be seen as the injection is administered.

But a photo of Pelosi getting the Pfizer vaccine taken from a different angleby pool photographer Ken Cedeno clearly shows the needle before it goes into Pelosi’s arm.

Read Saturday’s coronavirus news.

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2020-12-20 15:39:35Z
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