Despite promising COVID-19 vaccine candidates on the horizon worldwide, experts say Canada needs to overcome major hurdles before it can develop rollout strategies to get the right shot into Canadians' arms. Last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the country needs "a very sophisticated" rollout plan that will require "high degrees of logistical support." But determining which Canadians should get a vaccine first is extremely challenging without more details, write CBC's Adam Miller and Amina Zafar.

"The rollout is going to be the most difficult part of this vaccine and that's the part I think everyone is starting to think of today," said Dr. Zain Chagla, an infectious diseases specialist at St. Joseph's Healthcare in Hamilton. "If the vaccine data shows that the highest risk populations also have the highest reasonable benefit here, I think that prioritization scheme works very well and hopefully that's the target for the first 10 million doses."

Canada might need to develop several contingency plans. "If we decide to start with health-care workers, it's going to be a completely different strategy than if we start by vaccinating the elderly in long-term care facilities," said Dr. Caroline Quach, a pediatric infectious disease specialist and chair of the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI). "So it's difficult currently for provinces and territories to have a good idea and a good understanding of how they need to deploy."

The federal government has reportedly secured enough syringes and needles for provinces and territories to vaccinate all Canadians who wish to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, but Quach says the specific plans are still unclear. The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) said in a statement to CBC News the federal government is working with provinces and territories to approve and distribute a vaccine as quickly as possible. "It is anticipated that in the early stages of rollout, supply availability will be limited," a spokesperson said.

The NACI has released preliminary recommendations that prioritize the elderly and others at severe risk of illness: health-care workers, front-line staff and those with lower access to health care, including Indigenous populations. The NACI and government officials need to know who fell ill in the vaccinated group compared with the placebo group during clinical trials. Without answers, governments across Canada will need to hedge their bets in deciding priorities for vaccination. "They may have to work on two to three plans in parallel," Quach said. "Just in case one of those will be picked as the first strategy."

The boom of a gun rang out in the sky above Ottawa at 11 a.m. ET to mark the start of a moment of silence, but the tens of thousands of people who normally gather to mark Remembrance Day in the country's capital weren't there in person to hear it. Instead, a much smaller crowd of 100 or so dignitaries, active service members, veterans and members of the public gathered at the National War Memorial while Canadians across the country tuned in to the ceremony online or on TV.

The scaled-down ceremony in Ottawa reflected the need to avoid large gatherings because of concerns over the spread of COVID-19. The ceremony featured some traditional elements — including the playing of the Last Post and the ceremonial laying of wreaths at the foot of the memorial — while others were cancelled or scaled back. "It's incredibly important that no matter what is going on we remember our veterans, we remember this moment, we have that moment of silence," said Gen. Jonathan Vance, the country's top military commander.

Most observances of Canada's wartime sacrifices across the country were small after the Royal Canadian Legion explicitly discouraged Canadians from attending Remembrance Day ceremonies. Around 30,000 people normally turn out for the national ceremony. Private ceremonies are also being planned by long-term care facilities that are home to some of Canada's oldest surviving veterans, many of whom might normally attend a local commemoration but who are at particularly high risk for COVID-19. There was a special emphasis on the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War after many commemorations planned for earlier this year in Europe and elsewhere were cancelled because of the pandemic.

A little over two months into the school year, the fear of a widespread shutdown like Canada experienced in the spring has not materialized. At the same time, writes CBC's Jessica Wong, schools have not been immune to COVID-19. Although health and safety measures seem to have helped, health experts are raising additional concerns, especially as winter approaches.

According to the most recent weekly COVID-19 epidemiology report from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), schools and child-care centres accounted for the highest number of outbreaks in September, and the second-highest in October (after long-term care and retirement residences). British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec have all had school outbreaks, while New Brunswick has also seen a few individual school-related cases. PHAC considers it an outbreak in a school or child-care centre when there are two or more cases reported, and has noted that 64 per cent of schools with COVID-19 cases had only a single case reported.

Overall, Winnipeg epidemiologist Cynthia Carr said, Canada's schools have been doing well, but that doesn't mean they can relax infection control and prevention measures. These have included physical distancing, student cohorts, time spent outdoors, improving ventilation, masking and increased hand hygiene. "We can't let our guard down," said Carr, founder of EPI Research Inc. In the coming months, Carr will be keeping an eye on Canada's influenza rates — if they stay low, as they did during winter in the Southern Hemisphere this year, it will mean less stress for Canada's hospitals and emergency rooms, she said. As well, since symptoms of the flu overlap with those for COVID-19, Carr noted that kids who experience influenza symptoms will likely need to be tested for COVID-19.

Quebec has so far avoided the striking losses seen in the spring, when the province regularly recorded upwards of 100 deaths a day from COVID-19 as the virus ripped through ill-prepared long-term care homes. But the death toll has again begun to rise, with more than 700 deaths since school began in late August. More than half of those have occurred in slightly more than three weeks. The province recorded 22 deaths on Wednesday, bringing the total to 718 since school began on Aug. 24.

The answer to the question "who is dying?" is broadly similar to the spring: mostly, it's the elderly. What's different is where the people who have died had been living, write CBC's Leah Hendry and Benjamin Shingler. Unlike the first wave, it isn't primarily or even mostly in long-term care homes. Many of those who have died within the last month were living in their own homes, in the community. Experts have long predicted the surge of cases Quebec saw in late August, September and October, coinciding with the start of school, would lead to more hospitalizations and deaths. That appears to be happening, although on a scale along the lines of the more moderate projections issued last month by the INSPQ, Quebec's national institute of public health.

In all, more than 6,000 people have died in Quebec from COVID-19, by far the most of any province. But many jurisdictions across the country are also experiencing spikes, and have been stepping up health and safety measures to combat increasing case rates. Dr. Donald Vinh, an infectious disease specialist at the McGill University Health Centre in Montreal, said that while elderly people remain vulnerable to the virus, there have been some positive developments. "Even though the elderly are still the major targets in the second wave, there are fewer cases of deaths and hospitalizations than in the first wave." That's in part because of improved controls over the system of long-term care homes and a better understanding among both health-care workers and the public of the virus, Vinh said.

Stay informed with the latest COVID-19 data.

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic may have boosted failing public trust in science and scientists, a new survey has found. "I think it's fantastic that we see the decline in skepticism about science among Canadians," said Brett McCollum, a chemist at Calgary's Mount Royal University who has seen the results of the survey.

Since 2018, the 3M company has commissioned an annual global poll on a wide variety of attitudes toward science. In 2018, about 29 per cent of people around the world said they were skeptical of science. That had increased to about 35 per cent by fall 2019. But by the following summer, that skepticism had dropped back down to 28 per cent.

Canadian figures, where more than 1,000 people were surveyed, followed suit. Skepticism toward science dropped from 29 per cent pre-pandemic to 21 per cent afterward. A comparable margin of error for a random sample of the same size would be plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. As well, 50 per cent of Canadians said they're now more willing to advocate for science because of the pandemic. Before COVID-19, that figure was 25 per cent.

Trust in scientists and in science itself has also grown slightly in Canada since COVID-19's onset. Both have gained a couple percentage points, to 89 and 91 per cent, respectively. McCollum, who is also a 3M research chair, suggests the pandemic has brought home to people the real-world importance of scientific understanding. "I think the pandemic has given all of us an opportunity to pause and reflect and ask, 'Who's going to solve the pandemic?' "

Julie Gohm owns The Original Bug Shirt Company in Powassan, Ont. — a town of fewer than 4,000 people. Usually her company makes mosquito-proof clothing, but since September Gohm and her staff have been working on a special dress made out of poppies. "This year everything is surrounded by COVID, our whole lifestyle has changed, and I felt that Remembrance Day is not going to be what it always has been," Gohm said.

So Gohm decided to create the poppy dress as a tribute. The dress is made of polyester and lycra, and covered with more than 600 handmade fabric poppies. From design to completion, it took Gohm and her staff more than 300 hours to finish the unique garment. "We hand-cut every single poppy," she said, calling the process a labour of love. "I think as we age and as younger generations come up, if we don't in our generation continue to share how important Remembrance Day is, it's going to get lost."

When Gohm and her team finally completed the dress, they installed it in the shop window overlooking Powassan's main street and put it beside a modern-day Royal Canadian Air Force dress uniform. Gohm says she wasn't sure what to expect, but almost immediately people took notice. "I was thinking about how much has changed this year," Cally Essery said. "We can't do the things that we normally do to be thankful and to remember. So this helps."

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