Good evening, these are the top coronavirus headlines tonight:
Top headlines:
- The doctors in charge of the most complex health procedures in Canada are burning out
- Children’s Hospital in London, Ont., joins Toronto’s SickKids in reducing surgeries to aid overwhelmed critical care
- André Picard: Good science and bad politics create a mask mandate dilemma
An increasing number of health agencies have changed how they're reporting data on the coronavirus. A look at the current numbers in Canada for reported cases, deaths from COVID-19 and for hospitalizations can be found here.
COVID-19 updates from Canada and the world
- The Children’s Hospital at London Health Sciences Centre says it is cutting back on surgeries to help prop up its overburdened critical care units. The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and CHEO in Ottawa also recently announced they would cancel some surgeries to redeploy staff to hard-hit emergency departments and intensive care units.
- Ontario has asked thousands of family health care workers to work evenings and weekends to help ease the burden on overwhelmed children’s hospitals, a government memo obtained by The Canadian Press shows.
- The Chinese metropolis of Guangzhou locked down its largest district on Monday as it tries to tamp down a major COVID-19 outbreak, suspending public transit and requiring residents to present a negative test if they want to leave their homes.
- There is an imminent threat of measles spreading in various regions globally, as COVID-19 led to a steady decline in vaccination coverage and weakened surveillance of the disease, the World Health Organization and the U.S. public health agency CDC said on Wednesday.
- Experts in Brazil are warning that World Cup gatherings may fuel Brazil’s latest COVID-19 wave.
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Pandemic recovery
- Canadian surveys conducted over the past few years have shown burnout among health professionals performing some of the most complex procedures in the country has skyrocketed during the early waves of COVID-19. And some fear it will have lasting consequences for health care in this country.
- The downtowns of most major Canadian cities are still facing a substantial dip in foot traffic compared with prepandemic norms – but the opposite is true of smaller towns and suburbs within commutable distance of those cities, a new study shows.
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Globe opinion
André Picard: Good science, bad politics: The mask mandate dilemma
Fahad Razak and David Naylor: The kids are not all right. It’s time to require masks and encourage flu vaccination
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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
- Waste water is filling the COVID-19 data gap
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