The latest on the coronavirus outbreak for Jan. 29
- Coronavirus tracker: Follow the spread of COVID-19 as cases rise in much of Canada.
- Canadian aviation sector pleads for more aid in light of new travel restrictions.
- Moderna, as with Pfizer before, will cut deliveries of its vaccine to Canada in the short term.
- Johnson & Johnson says they'll soon be ready to ask U.S. regulators to approve their COVID-19 vaccine
- Read more: Some Alberta restaurant owners say they have no choice but to defy pandemic restrictions; find out more about the importance of low dead volume syringes in maximizing the vaccination rollout.
Ottawa, Canadian airlines suspend certain flights, introduce further travel restrictions during pandemic
Canada's main airlines have agreed to cancel service to the Caribbean and Mexico and the federal government is introducing new mandatory quarantine rules as it tries to discourage international travel during the pandemic.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on Friday that Air Canada, WestJet, Sunwing and Air Transat have agreed to suspend service to some sun destinations until April 30, and will be making arrangements with their customers who are in these regions now to organize flights home.
"The government asked, and we agreed," said Ed Sims, president and CEO of WestJet. "While we know that air travel is responsible for less than 2 per cent of cases since the start of the crisis, and even less today, we recognize the Government of Canada's ask is a precautionary measure."
International passenger flights, including from the U.S., will land only at Vancouver, Toronto-area, Calgary and Montreal airports starting next week. The prime minister said as soon as possible, the government will be introducing mandatory PCR testing at the airport for people returning to Canada, on top of the pre-boarding test already required. The Ontario government was expected on Friday afternoon to announce its own testing initiative at Pearson Airport.
When asked why other vacation destinations, including Florida, aren't part of the suspensions, Transport Minister Omar Alghabra said the government looked at the most popular locations.
Travellers will have to wait up to three days at an approved hotel for their test results, at their own expense, which Trudeau said is expected to be more than $2,000. Those with a negative test will then be able to finish their 14-day quarantine at home, with increased surveillance. Canada's Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam added that returnees will also be swabbed on Day 10.
Canada has had a ban on non-essential travel into the country by anyone who isn't a citizen or permanent resident since March. Canada follows Britain and Australia, among others, in announcing some form of hotel quarantine for air travellers.
From The National
IN BRIEF
Canadian aviation sector pleads for more aid in light of COVID-19 travel restrictions
With new air travel restrictions looming, industry representatives and union leaders painted a bleak picture of the state of the industry Thursday as they pleaded with MPs on the House of Commons transportation committee for direct aid for airlines and other air sector businesses.
Mike Mueller, senior vice-president of the Aerospace Industries Association of Canada, said Canadian businesses in the civil, defence and aerospace sectors have lost over 40 per cent of their revenue due to reduced international travel caused by COVID-19. Almost all companies are reporting various levels of shutdowns, and more than 50 per cent have laid off employees, he said.
"While the government's emergency measures have been appreciated and helpful — they're just not enough," said Mueller.
Mueller warned that Canadian companies would struggle to compete in the future with businesses from countries like France, the U.S., and Germany, which he says have spent billions of dollars on bailouts for airlines and related companies.
Rob Giguere, chief executive officer of the Air Canada Pilots Association, said his union represents 700 fewer active pilots than it did before the pandemic due to furloughs, layoffs or early retirements. Those who are still flying are taking home an average of 65 per cent of their salary, he said, while Air Canada is burning through almost $15 million each day.
Representatives for air traffic controllers and machinists also expressed serious concerns.
A spokesperson for Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said the government is committed to supporting Canadian airlines and workers.
Kat Cuplinskas said the sector had received over $1.5 billion through the Canada emergency wage subsidy. The federal government also announced $1 billion in support for airports and smaller airlines in its fall economic update. Any further support, she said, would be dependent on the airlines refunding cancelled flights, restoring regional routes that were cut to reduce costs and protecting jobs across the sector.
Moderna to cut deliveries to Canada in new blow to vaccination campaign
Canada's vaccination campaign faced another setback Friday with the announcement that Moderna will delay some shipments of its product next month.
The Massachusetts-based company was set to send some 230,400 shots to Canada next week, with 249,600 shots to follow three weeks later, but those forecasts have now been upended, a testament to just how uncertain the government's vaccine projections have become. Moderna is expected to ship between 20-25 per cent less product to Canada in February than originally planned.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tried to reassure the public that the pace of vaccinations will pick up as spring draws near.
"This temporary delay doesn't change the fact that we will still receive two million doses of the Moderna vaccine before the end of March, as we've been saying for months," he said. "We know that this is something that we're going to have to keep watching very, very closely."
This is the second time in less than a month that Canada has had to contend with delivery delays from a pharmaceutical company. Pfizer is shipping roughly 80 per cent fewer shots than it initially promised over the next four weeks as it grapples with the fallout from upgrades to its manufacturing plant in Puurs, Belgium.
Despite Trudeau's assurances, the delays mean that Canada will struggle to meet its target of six million Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna shots delivered by the end of March. To meet that target, more than 3.5 million doses of the two products will have to be delivered in the month of March alone — or roughly 885,000 doses a week.
Beyond the two products already approved, Health Canada regulators are reviewing the clinical trial data for the AstraZeneca vaccine, and a promising vaccine candidate from Johnson & Johnson's pharmaceutical division, Janssen.
The EU's medicines agency on Friday approved the AstraZeneca vaccine, a shot that was co-developed with researchers at the University of Oxford. Health Canada is expected to make a decision about the AstraZeneca product "in the coming days," a spokesperson said in a statement.
Read more about the adjustments
Johnson & Johnson ready to ask U.S. for emergency approval of COVID-19 vaccine
Johnson & Johnson's long-awaited vaccine developed by its Janssen division appears to protect against COVID-19 with just one shot, the company reported Friday.
In a trial that is still ongoing and has tracked some 44,000 patients in the U.S. and seven other countries over three continents, the vaccine so far has been 66 per cent effective overall at preventing moderate to severe illness, and much more protective — 85 per cent — against the most serious symptoms.
Dr. Matthew Oughton, an infectious disease specialist at Jewish General Hospital in Montreal, told CBC News the trial data "certainly looks promising for a single dose, which of course will certainly ease a lot of the logistics we've been dealing with so far with the current vaccines that have been granted approval."
He said by examining mixed populations across continents, the J&J trial is not only "looking at differences in how different groups of people respond, that also means that they capture different viral variants, so they have a good sense of the real-world efficacy of this vaccine."
Researchers tracked illnesses starting 28 days after vaccination — about the time when people getting a two-dose vaccine such as the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech products would have needed another shot.
While the effectiveness in trials is lower than what Moderna and Pfizer reported, the myriad supply issues resulting so far from dozens of countries demanding a scarce resource mean it could be a welcome addition in the fight against COVID-19 in certain cases.
Says Matthew Miller, an associate professor at the Institute for Infectious Disease Research at McMaster University, "less efficacious vaccines might be appropriate for lower-risk populations."
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, also was particularly encouraged by the findings with respect to patients with the most serious symptoms — in the vaccine group, no one who was vaccinated needed hospitalization or died after Day 28.
J&J said that within a week, it will file an application for emergency use in the U.S., and then abroad. The Canadian government signed an agreement with Johnson & Johnson for up to 38 million doses of their vaccine should Health Canada approve its use.
Read more about the trial data
Stay informed with the latest COVID-19 data.
THE SCIENCE
COVID-19 treatments: Data pours in, but doctors still often in wait-and-see mode
Even with the progression of vaccinations, people will continue to become very sick due to the coronavirus. Doctors who treat people with COVID-19 in hospital wards, intensive care units and out in the community continue to juggle conflicting clinical trial results — sometimes for the same treatment based on studies in different countries — most of which feature data from a small numbers of patients.
Dr. Lynora Saxinger, an infectious disease physician in Edmonton, follows the advances in treatments and how they're communicated.
"Enthusiasm travels so quickly and becomes ingrained before you even have a chance to really support whether it's a good idea," she told CBC News. "Then you're facing a bit of a battle to actually calm down enthusiasm if the data are less strong than the press release really suggested."
Media releases can be accompanied by what are known as preprints, or draft manuscripts that haven't been checked for errors and include all of the available data and a study's methods.
Last week, for example, Canadian hospitals put out news releases about two potential treatments: heparin, a common blood thinner for patients with moderate COVID-19 and colchicine, an oral medication used to treat gout.
As a result, Dr. Zain Chagla, an infectious disease physician in Hamilton, Ont., says he experienced the mismatch between patient expectations and what he could offer firsthand.
"When you put out a press release on Friday night and your patients that test positive for COVID on Saturday are saying, 'OK, where's my colchicine?' It's very hard ... to counsel them appropriately."
Saxinger said she's "provisionally excited" about the colchicine findings so far. Chagla and Saxinger both said ivermectin, an anti-parasite drug, needs further study in clinical trials, while Saxinger puts potential treatments with antivirals, monoclonal antibodies and convalescent plasma in the too-soon-to-tell group because larger or better trials are still needed.
The rub is that studies running in multiple countries can also be difficult to set up, especially since health-care systems are already stretched. Contracts and insurance paperwork can also bog down the trials.
"Outpatient trials are super hard to fund," Chagla said. "It's hard to navigate."
Despite all of the advances in treatments, and as Canada progresses in vaccine coverage of the eligible population, Saxinger sees greater potential in prevention from public health measures such as physical distancing, masking and staying close to home.
AND FINALLY...
Brazil's Amazon overwhelmed by new virus variant, longstanding health-care issues
"Where is the help?" Priscila Carvalho, whose mother lay on a respirator inside a Manus hospital, yelled in Portuguese to a cluster of TV cameras. "People are dying here! It's not a game!"
That was the scene captured by news crews earlier this month in front of a hospital in Manaus, the biggest city in Brazil's vast Amazon. Experts on the ground say the spread of a new variant there is so rapid — and the government's response so inadequate — that it's overwhelming doctors, nurses and hospitals.
Doctors Without Borders is struggling to find places for severe cases that need to be sent from the two smaller communities they are helping, São Gabriel da Cachoeira and Tefé, both several days' boat journey from Manaus.
"If the system collapses in Manaus, this whole population of the interior of the Amazon will not have access to necessary higher levels of care, with potentially grave consequences," said Pierre Van Heddegem, the head of a mission run by Doctors Without Borders in the region.
Local factors make conditions there ripe for the virus's spread. Indigenous communities have large households, poor access to health care and little reliable information.
The death rate in the Amazon is more than 170 per 100,000 residents, well over three times the rate of Canada. Nationally, deaths have topped 215,000, putting Brazil's toll second only to the United States. It has the third-highest number of coronavirus cases after the U.S. and India, at more than nine million.
Brazil started a vaccination campaign in the past two weeks, but doses are scarce and the country is relying on a vaccine made by China that has not seen the same levels of transparency as those approved in North America and Europe.
Read more about the situation on the ground
Find out more about COVID-19
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