Good evening, these are the top coronavirus headlines this week:
Top headlines:
- Children’s hospitals across Canada are seeing an unusual surge in sick children needing medical attention, with some hospitals reporting an alarming rise in admissions for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Experts fear the problem will become more severe as COVID-19 cases rise and influenza season begins.
- The Canada Border Services Agency acknowledged it provided inaccurate information to Parliament about a $1.2-million ArriveCan contract and will launch a full review of its list of companies that received federal funding to work on the app.
COVID-19 updates from Canada and the world
- As cold and flu season approaches, Canada may be unprepared to cope with new COVID-19 variants that are adept at evading immunity from vaccines and prior infections, health experts say.
- Canadian soldier James Topp, who has publicly spoken out against the forced removal of hundreds of unvaccinated Armed Forces members, received four new charges last week for a total of six counts of conduct to the prejudice of good order and discipline.
- In what appears to be a world first, the Chinese city of Shanghai started administering an inhalable COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday.
- Peace Arch Provincial Park, the nine-hectare park that straddles the B.C.-Washington state border south of Vancouver, reopened Monday after being closed more than two years ago. It was one of British Columbia’s last remaining COVID-19 closures.
- A judge has ordered Porter Airlines to pay $130-million in damages to the owner of the passenger terminal at Toronto’s island airport, Nieuport Aviation Infrastructures Partners LP, for refusing to pay fees during and prior to the pandemic shutdown, reports The Globe’s transportation reporter Eric Atkins.
- Alberta Premier Danielle Smith asked businesses in the province to ditch their vaccine requirements ahead of the government’s plan to make those who opt not to get immunized against COVID-19 a protected class of people.
Pandemic recovery
- The Ontario government announced last week that the province will be issuing a fourth round of direct payments to parents – meant to help students who are struggling to “catch up” in the classroom after two years of COVID-19 learning disruptions. Here’s how parents can apply.
- Employees have settled into a new way of working and are broadly opposed to returning to the office. Employers are concerned with maintaining culture, cohesion and continuity in a remote environment and are looking to coax their workers back to a centralized location. Jared Linzon suggests four ways to entice employees back to the office.
- Throughout most of the COVID-19 pandemic, older people were often in the news, but hardly heard from, so Students at UBC’s Global Reporting Program wanted to give them a voice. The resulting in-depth look at the people most affected in an aging world, shows how seniors’ loss of independence and quality of life is a preventable tragedy.
Globe opinion
From September: André Picard: Governments got an F for their pandemic responses – but will they learn from their multiple mistakes?
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More reading
Pfizer will charge $110 to $130 for a dose of its COVID-19 vaccine once the U.S. government stops buying the shots, but the drugmaker said it expects that people with private health insurance or coverage through public programs like Medicare or Medicaid will pay nothing.
Information centre
- How do I approach COVID-19 now? A doctor answers your current questions
- 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
Thank you for subscribing to our Coronavirus Update Newsletter. As the pandemic eases, we plan to wind this down and eventually cease sending, but have many other newsletters to keep you informed, including Globe Climate, Carrick on Money and Breaking News.
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