Today's coronavirus news: Liberals promising legal protection for businesses asking for proof of vaccination; EU regulator evaluating if vaccine booster is needed - Toronto Star

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

1:45 p.m.: The European Union’s drug regulator said Monday that it has started an expedited evaluation on whether to recommend a booster dose of the coronavirus vaccine made by Pfizer-BioNTech.

The European Medicines Agency said in a statement that it’s considering whether a third dose of the vaccine should be given six months after people age 16 and older have received two doses, “to restore protection after it has waned.”

EMA’s experts are carrying out an “accelerated assessment” of data submitted by Pfizer and BioNTech, including results from an ongoing trial in which about 300 healthy adults received a booster shot about six months after their second dose.

Pfizer has already submitted an application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administer for authorization of a third dose and the U.S. government said last month that boosters would likely be available in late September. Israel has already started administering booster doses and similar plans are under consideration in other countries for vulnerable populations, including Britain, France and Germany.

The World Health Organization has pleaded with rich countries not to use booster doses until at least the end of September, saying there is no scientific data that proves the shots are necessary. It says COVID-19 vaccines would be put to better use in developing countries, which have received fewer than 2% of the more than 5 billion doses administered.

1:30 p.m.: Quebec is reporting 530 new cases of COVID-19 today and no deaths attributed to the virus.

Health Minister Christian Dubé issued a tweet saying the province is seeing an increase in admissions to intensive care units.

Health authorities say hospitalizations climbed by 11 to 160, while the number of patients in intensive care rose by eight to 64.

Of the most recent infections, the province says 377 were among unvaccinated people or those who had received only one dose less than 14 days ago.

The province administered 12,066 doses of a COVID-19 vaccine on Sunday, including more than 3,998 first shots.

About 87 per cent of Quebecers aged 12 and older have received at least one dose, while more than 80 per cent are considered fully vaccinated with two shots.

12:10 p.m.: The resurgence of COVID-19 this summer and the national debate in the over vaccine requirements have created a fraught situation for the nation’s first responders, who are dying in larger numbers but pushing back against mandates.

In the first half of 2021, 71 law enforcement officials in the U.S. died from the virus — a small decrease compared to the 76 who died in the same time period in 2020, per data compiled by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. Last year, the total figure was 241 — making the virus the the leading cause of law enforcement line-of-duty deaths.

Despite the deaths, police officers and other first responders are among those most hesitant to get the vaccine and their cases continue to grow. No national statistics show the vaccination rate for America’s entire population of first responders but individual police and fire departments across the country report figures far below the national rate of 74 per cent of adults who have had at least one dose.

11:40 a.m.: The federal Liberals are promising legal protection for businesses asking for proof of COVID-19 vaccination from staff and customers.

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau discussed the platform promise and other proposed supports for businesses and workers at a Labour Day campaign stop in Welland, Ont.

He says his party will table legislation if re-elected that will ensure organizations can require immunization without fear of legal challenges.

Business groups have raised concerns about that legislative gap in recent weeks as provinces have announced new policies mandating the shots in non-essential settings.

Trudeau also discussed promised expansions of hiring and workers’ support programs his government introduced during the pandemic and a tax credit for construction trades workers who travel or relocate for employment.

He says his party’s plan aims to avoid lockdowns, bring people back to work and keep businesses open.

9:50 a.m.: The Ontario government won’t be releasing its daily COVID-19 numbers update today because of the Labour Day holiday.

The province will report two days’ worth of data on Tuesday instead, as it has done over past holiday long weekends.

9:15 a.m.: With the start of a new school year around the corner, some parents across the Greater Toronto Area are feeling uneasy about being locked-in to their decision to send their children back into the classroom amid an escalating fourth wave.

Several school boards across the GTA plan to offer families just one opportunity to switch between in-person and virtual learning during the upcoming academic year; and others will provide no scheduled chance for a transition.

Read the full story from the Star’s Maria Sarrouh.

7 a.m.: Your kindergartner has a runny nose. His vaccinated sister in Grade 8 feels fine. But there was also a recent COVID-19 case on the older kid’s basketball team. So which of your kids can go to class? Who needs a nose swab? And where or how can they get tested?

At times, it can feel like you need a PhD to navigate the dizzying and ever-changing rules and protocols that come with being a parent in a pandemic. This year, the landscape is even more complex with some students vaccinated, extracurriculars back in the mix, and a surging Delta wave that promises to find the unvaccinated among us, many of whom are kids.

To save you from digging through your pile of COVID-19 handouts from your kid’s school, or getting lost as you click through multiple public health websites, the Star has compiled a one-stop cheat sheet for Toronto parents rushing to get their kids off to school — and struggling to survive another pandemic school year with their sanity intact.

Read the full story by the Star’s Jennifer Yang and Megan Ogilvie.

7 a.m.: A long-term-care home resident in Oshawa has died as a result of COVID-19, after an outbreak that was first declared at the home on Aug. 26.

Tammy Clarke, administrative assistant at the Regional Municipality of Durham, wrote in an email Sunday that a resident who tested positive at Hillsdale Estates has died.

Read the full story by the Star’s Zena Salem.

6:30 a.m.: As patients stream into Mississippi hospitals one after another, doctors and nurses have become all too accustomed to the rampant denial and misinformation about COVID-19 in the nation’s least vaccinated state.

People in denial about the severity of their own illness or the virus itself, with visitors frequently trying to enter hospitals without masks. The painful look of recognition on patients’ faces when they realize they made a mistake not getting vaccinated. The constant misinformation about the coronavirus that they discuss with medical staff.

“There’s no point in being judgmental in that situation. There’s no point in telling them, ‘You should have gotten the vaccine or you wouldn’t be here,’” said Dr. Risa Moriarity, executive vice chair of the University of Mississippi Medical Center’s emergency department. “We don’t do that. We try not to preach and lecture them. Some of them are so sick they can barely even speak to us.”

Mississippi’s low vaccinated rate, with about 38 per cent of the state’s 3 million people fully inoculated against COVID-19, is driving a surge in cases and hospitalizations that is overwhelming medical workers. The workers are angry and exhausted over both the workload and refusal by residents to embrace the vaccine.

Physicians at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, the only level one trauma center in all of Mississippi, are caring for the sickest patients in the state.

5:15 a.m.: When Eric Grunor contracted COVID-19 in January, he became so ill that he struggled to get off the couch. One night, he awoke at 3 a.m., winded, barely able to talk and so fatigued he could hardly lift his head.

“I woke my wife up and said, ‘You’ve got to take me to the ER,’” he said. “My wife thought she was going to be a widow.”

After three weeks of recovery at home, the 54-year-old Texas insurance broker’s experience is one few would want to endure twice. But he remains unvaccinated, putting him among a stubborn contingent of Americans who say they have natural immunity and don’t require shots — a belief that experts are divided on.

“I’m in the category of person who would least need the vaccine, at this point,” said Grunor. “To me, natural antibodies are better than any man-made antibodies.”

Grunor said he’s concerned that vaccinated people can still get infected and believes there’s a lack of clarity about the shots’ long-term safety. Even if he hadn’t been ill, he said, he probably would have remained unvaccinated. His wife and son, who appear to have avoided COVID-19, aren’t vaccinated either.

More than 100 million people in the U.S. have likely been infected with COVID-19, according to one recent estimate. Many of them have become proponents of natural immunity who are among the roughly 126 million Americans who remain unvaccinated, about 38 per cent of the population.

4:30 a.m.: Mary Taboniar went 15 months without a paycheck, thanks to the COVID pandemic. A housekeeper at the Hilton Hawaiian Village resort in Honolulu, the single mother of two saw her income completely vanish as the virus devastated the hospitality industry.

For more than a year, Taboniar depended entirely on boosted unemployment benefits and a network of local foodbanks to feed her family. Even this summer as the vaccine rollout took hold and tourists began to travel again, her work was slow to return, peaking at 11 days in August — about half her pre-pandemic workload.

Taboniar is one of millions of Americans for whom Labor Day 2021 represents a perilous crossroads. Two primary anchors of the government’s COVID protection package are ending or have recently ended. Starting Monday, an estimated 8.9 million people will lose all unemployment benefits. A federal eviction moratorium already has expired.

While other aspects of pandemic assistance including rental aid and the expanded Child Tax Credit are still widely available, untold millions of Americans will face Labor Day with a suddenly shrunken social safety net.

“This will be a double whammy of hardship,” said Jamie Contreras, secretary-treasurer of the SEIU, a union that represents custodians in office buildings and food service workers in airports. “We’re not anywhere near done. People still need help. ... For millions of people nothing has changed from a year and a half ago.”

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For Sunday’s COVID-19 developments, click here

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2021-09-06 17:43:03Z
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