TORONTO – The long wait is over. The Ontario government has decided that due to concerns about staff shortages in hospitals, it will not make vaccination mandatory for health-care workers. This was announced today by Prime Minister Ford himself, sparking endless controversy: both the Ontario Science Table and doctors and experts in the field had asked to make the vaccine mandatory for health workers. “The issue is complex. After reviewing the situation our government decided to maintain its flexible approach by leaving the decision to individual hospitals,” he said. →
TORONTO – New cases and active infections continue to decrease in Ontario. Today, provincial health officials recorded 373 infections, down from 443 on Sunday and 458 on the same day a week ago. 108 of the cases involve fully vaccinated people, representing approximately 29% of all reported cases. →
EDMONTON – 652 new cases of Covid-19 in Alberta and, above all, 38 deaths which bring the total number of victims, in the province, from the beginning of the pandemic to 2,901. These are the data from Wednesday, which for the number of deaths represent a negative record: the figure in fact equals that recorded on 12 January for the majority of deaths reported in a single day. →
TORONTO – Covid-19 in Ontario: 417 new cases today, a slight increase compared to the previous day (306) but also below the seven-day average. In addition, 35,421 tests were processed in the previous 24 hours (and another 18,914 are being processed), while yesterday there were far fewer: 23,219. The positivity to the test, therefore, drops to 1.5%. Yesterday (and last week) it was 1.7%. →
TORONTO – The long-awaited day, that of returning to school after months and months, has also arrived for the students of the Toronto administrations, both public and Catholic. And it could be a good day, were it not for the thousand unknowns that loom also due to the delays in the reorganization of schools, necessary with the pandemic still underway. These first two days, then – tomorrow and Friday, then all at home again for the weekend – will be nothing more than a kind of “rehearsal” of what will happen during the school year. Impossible to predict, however, what will happen. →