Coronavirus spreads to all Canadian provinces
OTTAWA, Canada — The new coronavirus has spread across Canada with a total of 313 cases confirmed Sunday in its 10 provinces, the chief public health officer told a news conference.
Atlantic coast provinces were the last to be hit. Major metropolitan centres — Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver — remain the most affected.
"I'm asking everyone to take strong action to prevent the spread of the virus," chief public health officer Theresa Tam said, warning that a window of opportunity to mitigate its spread was "quickly narrowing."
Measures must include, she said, limiting travel and self-isolating for 14 days upon returning from a trip abroad, as well as avoiding large crowds, practicing "social distancing" and working from home, if possible, over the coming weeks.
After a meeting of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's cabinet, ministers said to expect more actions to be announced on Monday.
Canada has tested nearly 25,000 people — among the highest per capita rates in the world. The number of positive test results jumped from a few dozen just last week, including one death.
"Most of the cases (in Canada) have been linked to travel," Tam said, "but that could change very quickly."
Earlier Trudeau was asked if he was considering closing the border.
"We've taken some very strong measures, and we are not taking anything off the table, we are looking daily at next steps that we might take, or we shouldn't take," Trudeau told broadcaster CTV in an interview from his Ottawa home where he and his family are self-isolating after his wife Sophie tested positive for the virus.
The prime minister added, "Sophie's got a headache right now and feeling a little under the weather, but it is not worse than what would be a bad cold," he said. "Of course we're all being very careful."
Tam noted that it was important for every country to "contain the outbreak within their own setting," but added that "countries that enacted travel bans have not been able to keep out this particular virus."
In fact, she said, some countries that "have been impacted the most have actually been the ones with the most stringent travel and border measures."
Follow this page for updates on a mysterious pneumonia outbreak that has struck dozens of people in China.
New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says on Sunday that he had contracted COVID-19, testing positive at a key point in his flailing campaign for re-election.
Hipkins saYS on his official social media feed that he would need to isolate for up to five days -- less than two weeks before his country's general election.
The leader of the centre-left Labour Party said he started to experience cold symptoms on Saturday and had cancelled most of his weekend engagements. — AFP
The World Health Organization and US health authorities say Friday they are closely monitoring a new variant of COVID-19, although the potential impact of BA.2.86 is currently unknown.
The WHO classified the new variant as one under surveillance "due to the large number (more than 30) of spike gene mutations it carries", it wrote in a bulletin about the pandemic late Thursday.
So far, the variant has only been detected in Israel, Denmark and the United States. — AFP
The World Health Organization says on Friday that the number of new COVID-19 cases reported worldwide rose by 80% in the last month, days after designating a new "variant of interest".
The WHO declared in May that Covid is no longer a global health emergency, but has warned that the virus will continue to circulate and mutate, causing occasional spikes in infections, hospitalisations and deaths.
In its weekly update, the UN agency said that nations reported nearly 1.5 million new cases from July 10 to August 6, an 80% increase compared to the previous 28 days. — AFP
The head of US intelligence says that there was no evidence that the COVID-19 virus was created in the Chinese government's Wuhan research lab.
In a declassified report, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) says they had no information backing recent claims that three scientists at the lab were some of the very first infected with COVID-19 and may have created the virus themselves.
Drawing on intelligence collected by various member agencies of the US intelligence community (IC), the ODNI report says some scientists at the Wuhan lab had done genetic engineering of coronaviruses similar to COVID-19. — AFP
Boris Johnson deliberately misled MPs over Covid lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street when he was prime minister, a UK parliament committee ruled on Thursday.
The cross-party Privileges Committee said Johnson, 58, would have been suspended as an MP for 90 days for "repeated contempts (of parliament) and for seeking to undermine the parliamentary process".
But he avoided any formal sanction by his peers in the House of Commons by resigning as an MP last week.
In his resignation statement last Friday, Johnson pre-empted publication of the committee's conclusions, claiming a political stitch-up, even though the body has a majority from his own party.
He was unrepentant again on Thursday, accusing the committee of being "anti-democratic... to bring about what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination".
Calling it "beneath contempt", he said it was "for the people of this to decide who sits in parliament, not Harriet Harman", the veteran opposition Labour MP who chaired the seven-person committee. — AFP
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