With an amendment to the Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act, the province will be able to move hospital patients to long-term care homes or retirements homes, provided their doctor agrees their medical needs can be met in that setting, without the patient’s consent or the consent of their substitute decision maker.
OTTAWA – More than 2,000 people returning to Canada since mandatory hotel quarantines began have tested positive for COVID-19 and more than a quarter of them were infected with a variant of concern.
The data supplied to The Canadian Press by the Public Health Agency of Canada comes as the federal government is being pressured to take even more steps to keep new variants from getting into the country.
Data shows between Feb. 22 and April 11, 2,018 returning travellers tested positive on a test taken when they arrived in the country.
The Ontario government says it will provide three paid sick days for workers who don’t have time off during the COVID-19 pandemic, as the province continues to push Ottawa to improve its federal benefit.
The new temporary provincial program, which will expire on Sept. 25, will require employers to pay their workers up to $200 a day for up to three days. Employees can use the days if they have symptoms, to get vaccinated or to care for others. The changes will be retroactive to April 19, and will be administered by the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, with employers being reimbursed. The changes will be introduced through legislation.
Too late for many.
Legal challenges to the federal quarantine hotel policy continue to work their way through the courts, with another decision that was released on April 23. This decision was a minor procedural setback that will not have a bearing on the challenge to the policy. But the decision has attracted significant attention and is worth understanding.
… “In light of how quickly COVID-19 spread in long-term-care homes, every day that implementing mandatory requirements was delayed made a difference in the effort to control its spread,” Lysyk said in her report.
Lysyk said in her report that the province was aware in March, 2020 that 98 per cent of the COVID-19 deaths in Italy had involved elderly people with pre-existing conditions and should have recognized the risk the virus posed to long-term care homes.
It was neglect and incompetence that killed them.
More… Ontario long-term care homes were poorly prepared for COVID-19 pandemic, auditor-general report says
The report also noted that 13 of the 15 homes with the highest numbers of COVID-19 deaths were operated by for-profit entities. The 15 homes had only 4.4 per cent of all long-term-care home beds but accounted for 28 per cent of all resident deaths.
Lysyk’s report makes 16 recommendations to address the findings.
Those include requiring operators to renovate and upgrade homes more quickly, and coming up with a provincial strategy to address “root causes” of staffing shortages. It also urges development of a pandemic plan for the sector.
And then there’s this.
Last week I received this letter from Runnymede the hospital where my Mother contracted Covid. It’s a request that she fill out a patient experience survey. When her condition worsened she was transferred to a Covid ward at a nearby hospital where she died. They know or should know she passed away. I arranged to pick up her belongings at Runnymede and informed staff of her passing. They were so kind that along with her personal items they included a bag of her soiled bed linens which I tossed back into the lobby along with a few choice remarks.
When the former head of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Dr. Robert Redfield, recently said Covid-19 likely leaked from a Chinese research lab, news headlines called it “shocking.”
Dr. Robert Redfield on CNN: “I still think the most likely etiology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory— you know, escaped.”
That was followed by a flurry of media reports ridiculing the notion; insisting that Covid-19 probably jumped from bats to people through an unexplained, natural route. But there’s new information that hasn’t been widely reported. A sizable segment of the research community has formed the same opinion as Dr. Redfield: that Covid-19 leaked from experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
Ontario is reporting 3,480 cases of #COVID19 and nearly 50,200 tests completed. Locally, there are 961 new cases in Toronto, 589 in Peel, 341 in Niagara and 290 in York Region.
As of 8:00 p.m. yesterday, 4,907,203 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered.
— Christine Elliott (@celliottability) April 28, 2021
Ontario largely ignored long-term care as COVID-19 crisis began, internal documents reveal
Internal government documents obtained by CBC News show few signs that Ontario prepared the long-term care sector for the risks from COVID-19 before the virus began its deadly spread through the province’s nursing homes.
CBC News asked the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Long-Term Care for all reports, memos and briefing notes concerning the novel coronavirus/COVID-19 and long-term care homes in February, March and April of 2020.
Only a handful of documents from the ministries mention protecting long-term care residents in February, even as cases were steadily arriving in Ontario and the devastation from the infections in Italy became apparent.
I still don’t understand how my late Mother was never offered the vaccine while confined to a physio-rehab hospital. A hospital where the majority of patients were elderly and which had previous outbreaks. She passed away March 5th from Covid she contracted in that hospital. Why was she and so many others left unprotected?
“We are of course looking very very carefully at this issue, even as we are in the third wave right now, dealing with extremely urgent and difficult situations. We continue to plan for how we reopen the economy, how we reopen our borders, how we get back to normal, which is something that all Canadians want to do. Obviously, as was the case pre-pandemic, certificates of vaccination are a part of international travel to certain regions and are naturally to be expected when it comes to this pandemic and the coronavirus,” said Trudeau during a news conference.
Canadians have been presented with statistics, charts and reporting galore about the ongoing challenges posed by COVID-19. What about the lockdowns though? Are they actually working? And are their benefits outweighing their harms?
Monday, FNC host Tucker Carlson questioned so-called health experts and public official’s insistence on mask mandates, even after dubious science and double standards for individuals based on political circumstances, including Black Lives Matter protests that took place in 2020.
Carlson urged his viewers to question and speak about the efficacy of masks and against mask mandates when possible.
The Trudeau government’s incompetence is causing death and economic dysfunction
Canada’s provincial health-care systems are in crisis, the economy is locked down and the Liberal government’s dose-delay edict is putting lives at risk. And yet, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau talks about progress, about his big “portfolio of vaccines” and about how many millions of doses are on their way.
“I’m upset every time the media repeats the government’s claims about the number of vaccines that are planned or expected to arrive at the start of any given week, rather than reporting at the end of a given week on how many vaccines had actually been received,” said one health-care professional who asked to remain anonymous.
The only thing the province has been consistent about during the pandemic is its inconsistency in health orders.
There were few surprises in the new health orders issued by Manitoba Health on Monday. As expected household gatherings were the sacrificial lambs.
Two politicians are among several people charged for attending a large service in Aylmer, Ont., at the Church of God Restoration in defiance of COVID-19 lockdown restrictions.
MP Derek Sloan and MPP Randy Hillier, who both represent Kingston-area ridings as Independents, are scheduled to appear in Elgin County provincial offences court in June, CBC News has learned.
The two, who have been vocal about their opposition to COVID-19 public health measures, attended the large Sunday service in the southwestern Ontario town.
Ontario reports 3,200+ new COVID-19 cases; ICU occupancy flat for first time in weeks
Ontario reported 3,265 new COVID-19 cases and 29 more deaths on Tuesday, the fourth straight day of case declines as hospital ICU occupancy fell slightly for the first time in three weeks.
Ontario reported 3,510 new cases on Monday, along with 3,947 cases on Sunday and 4,094 on Saturday.
There are now 39,914 active cases of infection across the province, the first time that number fell below 40,000 in nearly two weeks.
You mean the other experts were talking through their hat?
FUREY: New Canadian study breaks down ‘ineffectiveness’ and harms of lockdowns
Canadians have been presented with statistics, charts and reporting galore about the ongoing challenges posed by COVID-19. What about the lockdowns though? Are they actually working? And are their benefits outweighing their harms?
Staying 2 metres apart does little to limit indoor spread of COVID-19: study
Staying at least two metres apart from others while indoors has virtually no effect on the risk of exposure to COVID-19, a new study out of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) says.
In the weeks following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, costs of most of the food items found on the shelves of US grocery stores rose based on anticipated shortages of such items that might result from transportation and logistical problems that followed the shutdown of many parts of the economy. There wasn’t so much a shortage of goods to go on the shelves as there was an anticipated interruption in the “just in time” delivery supply line that keeps such products moving from processes to wholesalers, wholesalers to distributors, and distributors to retailers. As those disruptions were solved — or didn’t happen as feared in many instances — consumer goods and staples reappeared on the store shelves without much difference from the pre-pandemic pricing.
But warning bells are starting to be heard about another impending shortage of consumer goods and food staples as wholesale prices of certain raw materials used in a wide variety of food preparations have risen sharply over the past several weeks. This steady upward price pressure is coming at a time when many fragile economies around the world are not in a position to handle a sharp rise in the cost of food for their populations.
