Good evening, these are the top coronavirus headlines tonight:
Top headlines:
- B.C. says pandemic surgery backlog has been almost cleared. But many are still waiting
- Alberta allows physicians, other health-care workers to prescribe Paxlovid for COVID
- During lockdown in Shanghai, residents turn to NFTs to combat censorship
In the past seven days, there were 429 deaths from COVID-19 nationally, down 7 per cent over the same period. At least 6,482 people are being treated in hospitals and 417 are in the ICU.
Canada’s inoculation rate is 13th among countries with a population of one million or more people.
Sources: Canada data is compiled from government websites, Johns Hopkins and COVID-19 Canada Open Data Working Group; international data is from Johns Hopkins University.
Coronavirus explainers: Coronavirus in maps and charts • Tracking vaccine doses
COVID-19 updates from Canada and the world
- B.C.’s Ministry of Health says the province has caught up on most of the surgeries delayed by the pandemic, but some health professionals say patients continue to struggle with access to operating rooms and growing wait-lists.
- Ontario reported 31 deaths today due to COVID-19, while hospitalizations and ICU patients decreased slightly.
- In Quebec, there were 30 deaths and a drop in hospitalizations, while the province also announced the lifting of its mask mandate on May 14. But, warned interim public health director Dr. Luc Boileau, “the virus is not leaving us on the 14th. It will continue to be there.”
- Alberta will allow physicians and other health-care workers to prescribe Paxlovid for COVID-19.
- Prince Edward Island said it will start testing its wastewater to help maintain surveillance over COVID-19, but it will be five weeks before there’s enough data to determine trends.
- As a new way to combat the spread of coronavirus, Beijing closed down 60 of its subway stations on Wednesday, while reporting 51 new cases of the virus.
Pandemic recovery
- In a dispute with Alberta’s government that centres around remote work and where employees can live, but delves into the area of postsecondary institutions’ independence, Athabasca University is in a fight for its future.
- The House of Commons ethics committee says the government must tell Canadians if it’s tracking their movements. The committee started looking into the issue after public outcry over the federal health agency’s use of data from cell towers to track “population mobility patterns” during lockdowns.
- Moderna reported $6-billion in first-quarter revenue from its COVID-19 vaccine, and said it expects vaccine sales to be higher in the second half of the year than in the first. The CEO said he hoped people, especially those at high-risk of disease, would get a booster dose in the fall.
- In an attempt to thwart China’s censors and to preserve memories of Shanghai’s month-long COVID-19 lockdown, residents are turning videos, photos and artwork capturing their ordeal into NFTs to ensure they can be shared and avoid deletion.
Globe opinion
Globe Editorial Board: Enjoy this spring’s COVID break, brought to you by vaccines
Kasari Govender: B.C.’s new anti-racism legislation allows us to turn intersectional data into systemic change
More reading
- Business activity in the euro zone was up last month thanks to a further loosening of COVID-19 restrictions, a survey showed on Wednesday. “The euro zone economy has shown surprising resilience in the face of the Ukraine-Russia war, thanks to a renewed burst of service sector activity as virus containment measures were relaxed further during April,” said Chris Williamson, chief business economist at S&P Global.
Information centre
- Everything you need to know about Canada’s travel rules for vaccinated and unvaccinated people
- When will COVID-19 be endemic? The four factors that will shape the virus’s future
- Wastewater is filling the COVID-19 data gap
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