Today’s coronavirus news: Ontario is reporting 1,039 COVID-19 cases and 33 deaths Tuesday and 1,449 and 8 deaths Monday; Ontarians who got 1st AstraZeneca shot mid-March can book 2nd dose - Toronto Star

The latest coronavirus news from Canada and around the world Tuesday. This file will be updated throughout the day. Web links to longer stories if available.

10:17 a.m. (will be updated) Ontario is reporting 1,039 COVID-19 cases and 33 deaths Tuesday and 1,449 and 8 deaths Monday.

The seven-day average is down to 1,693 cases per day or 81 weekly per 100,000, and up to 21.3 deaths per day, according to the Star’s Ed Tubb.

16,857 completed tests Tuesday and 20,151 Monday; 6.4% positive both days.

On Tuesday, there are 325 new cases in Toronto, 231 in Peel and 77 in York Region.

9:55 a.m. Toronto shelters are wasting no time getting at-risk youth vaccinated as the province lowers the COVID-19 vaccine age eligibility to Ontarians 18 and under.

One of those shelters is Covenant House, which has created a vaccine clinic to help homeless youth get a shot.

"Helping our youth getting vaccinated has been an absolute privilege and highlight of my nursing career so far," said Medina Esmail, a registered street nurse who works with youth inside Covenant House's health centre.

As of May 23, youth aged 12 and up are able to book an appointment for a vaccine through the provincial booking system, call centre and certain pharmacies. Some health clinics across the GTA have already started vaccinating youth with Pfizer-BioNTech, the only vaccine approved for youth 12 and older.

Between 3,300 to 10,000 youth experience homelessness every year in Toronto, with 20 per cent of them between 13 and 24 years of age, Youth Without Shelter says on its website.

9:30 a.m. A tournament intended to be a celebration of European soccer will instead reflect many of the uncertainties that have beset the sport during the coronavirus pandemic.

Just completing the European Championship a year later than planned — with teams flying around Europe to play games — will be a triumph on a continent trying to supress new coronavirus variants.

UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin inherited a complex plan from Michel Platini that he has long held reservations about, even before the coronavirus outbreak added to the logistical complexities.

“It’s quite a tough situation, a tough format by itself, and with COVID it’s even tougher,“ Ceferin told The Associated Press. ”So it’s not easy but now it looks OK and I can’t imagine that this crisis will be worse.”

The risk of coronavirus infections is increased the more travel for the 24 teams there is, as well as adding to the workload on players after a pandemic-congested season.

9:02 a.m. Moderna says it will ask Canada to authorize its vaccine for kids between 12 and 17 years old after a study of its mRNA vaccine in teenagers shows it to be both safe and effective.

The Massachusetts-based vaccine maker says it will submit the study results to international regulators in early June.

The company says the study of 3,700 kids in that age group found no cases of COVID-19 among the kids who got two doses of the vaccine. The youth got the same size doses as adults, four weeks apart.

The company says there were no serious safety issues, and the side-effects mirrored those seen in adults, with headache, fatigue, pain and chills the most commonly reported issues after the second dose.

More than two dozen countries, including Canada, have greenlighted the vaccine for use in adults, but thus far Pfizer-BioNTech is the only vaccine available in Canada for youth.

8:33 a.m. Moderna said Tuesday its COVID-19 vaccine strongly protects kids as young as 12, a step that could put the shot on track to become the second option for that age group in the U.S.

With global vaccine supplies still tight, much of the world is struggling to vaccinate adults in the quest to end the pandemic. But earlier this month, the U.S. and Canada authorized another vaccine — the shot made by Pfizer and BioNTech — to be used starting at age 12.

Moderna aims to be next in line, saying it will submit its teen data to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other global regulators early next month.

The company studied more than 3,700 12- to 17-year-olds. Preliminary findings showed the vaccine triggered the same signs of immune protection in kids as it does in adults, and the same kind of temporary side effects such as sore arms, headache and fatigue.

There were no COVID-19 diagnoses in those given two doses of the Moderna vaccine compared with four cases among kids given dummy shots. In a press release, the company also said the vaccine appeared 93% effective two weeks after the first dose.

While children are far less likely than adults to get seriously ill from COVID-19, they represent about 14% of the nation’s coronavirus cases. At least 316 have died in the U.S. alone, according to a tally by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

With plenty of vaccine supply in the U.S., younger teens flocked to get Pfizer's shot in the days after FDA opened it to them, part of a push to get as many kids vaccinated as possible before the next school year.

Both Pfizer and Moderna have begun testing in even younger children, from age 11 down to 6-month-old babies. This testing is more complex: Teens receive the same dose as adults, but researchers are testing smaller doses in younger children. Experts hope to see some results in the fall.

8:30 a.m. Due to inclement weather, the Canada’s Wonderland drive-thru vaccination clinic will be temporarily closed Tuesday and Wednesday. Appointments have been relocated to the Maple Community Centre, 10190 Keele Street in Vaughan.

7:45 a.m. The Japanese government Tuesday was quick to deny a U.S. warning for Americans to avoid traveling to Japan would have an impact on Olympians wanting to compete in the postponed Tokyo Games.

U.S. officials cited a surge in coronavirus cases in Japan caused by virus variants that may even be risky to vaccinated people. They didn't ban Americans from visiting Japan, but the warnings could affect insurance rates and whether Olympic athletes and other participants decide to join the games that open on July 23.

Most metro areas in Japan are under a state of emergency and expected to remain so through mid-June because of rising serious COVID-19 cases that are putting pressure on the country's medical care systems. That raises concern about how the country could cope with the arrival of tens of thousands of Olympic participants if its hospitals remain stressed and little of its population is vaccinated.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato said at a news conference Tuesday that the warning does not prohibit essential travel and Japan believes the U.S. support for Tokyo's effort to hold the Olympics is unchanged.

“We believe there is no change to the U.S. position supporting the Japanese government's determination to achieve the games,” Kato said, adding that Washington has told Tokyo the travel warning is not related to the participation of the U.S. Olympic team.

The United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee said it still anticipates American athletes will be able to safely compete at the Tokyo Games.

Seiko Hashimoto, the president of the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee, echoed the remarks of the USOPC.

“I’m aware the USOPC said that the advisory wouldn’t affect the games," she said. "I think it’s important for us to prepare well to accept athletes under such restrictions.”

Fans coming from abroad were banned from the Tokyo Olympics months ago, but athletes, families, sporting officials from around the world and other stakeholders still amount to a mass influx of international travelers. In opinion polls, the Japanese public has expressed opposition to holding the games out of safety concerns while most people will not be vaccinated.

7:35 a.m. EU leaders agreed Tuesday to donate at least 100 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to poorer nations by the end of the year as supplies steadily rise across Europe.

Gathered in Brussels for a two-day summit, the 27 leaders backed a text in which they pledge to continue efforts “to increase global vaccine production capacities in order to meet global needs."

Leaders also called “for work to be stepped up to ensure global equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines" and reiterated their support for the U.N.-backed COVAX program. COVAX aims to ensure equitable access to COVID-19 shots for low-and middle-income countries.

The program suffered a major setback last week when its biggest supplier, the Serum Institute of India, announced it would likely not export any more vaccines until the end of the year due to the COVID-19 crisis on the subcontinent.

Leaders acknowledged that vaccination has finally picked up across their continent following a painfully slow start compared with the successful drives in the U.S., Britain and Israel. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen presented data to the leaders suggesting that 300 million doses will have been delivered in the region by the end of May, with about 46% of the adult population in the bloc of 450 million getting at least a first dose of vaccine.

But as vaccination campaigns continue to progress in the Western world, poorer countries are struggling to acquire supplies. During a health summit in Rome last week, Italian Premier Mario Draghi said that nearly 1.5 billion vaccine doses have been administered in over 180 countries worldwide. Yet only 0.3% were in low-income countries, while richer countries administered around 85%.

In addition to the donation of shots, leaders pledged to help countries in need to develop vaccine production locally.

It was unclear which vaccines from the EU's portfolio would be donated. Coronavirus vaccines authorized by the European Medicines Agency, the bloc’s drug regulator, include Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.

The agreement came after the U.S. said earlier this month it will share an additional 20 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines with the world on top of a prior commitment to share about 60 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine.

7:25 a.m. Last fall, even though Barrie’s CanSave had been quite proactive in its implementation of COVID-19 safety protocols, the management team wondered if they had done enough.

CanSave, an independent manufacturing company founded in 1982 by brothers Larry and Cully Koza, was never shuttered since it’s considered an essential business that supplies the construction industry.

“This is our first pandemic,” jokes Dan McArthur, president of CanSave. “And so we were just trying to figure out how to navigate through this and keep our people as safe as possible. That was our No. 1 objective.”

The company invested in PPE, touch-free technology, repurposing space to make more rooms for lunches and breaks, remote home offices for the staff who could work at home and, perhaps most importantly, a physical distancing system from Safeteams, a Canadian company selling wearable technology that alerts people when they’re getting within six feet of another person. It also keeps track of those incidents, which makes it possible to do contact tracing in the event of a COVID-19 case.

Read the full story from Christine Sismondo

7:17 a.m. It was a record April for pre-construction and new condo sales in the Toronto region as more projects launched and consumers considered their alternatives in the context of rapidly escalating home prices.

The 3,619 condos that sold last month represent a 10-year high for April, up 69 per cent over the average, according to the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) on Tuesday.

Although condo sales were up 612 per cent year over year, the industry association warned that April 2020 was the first full month of the pandemic lockdown and isn’t a valid comparison.

Read the full story from the Star’s Tess Kalinowski

6:50 a.m. The British government faced criticism Tuesday that it was introducing local lockdowns by stealth after it published new guidelines for eight areas of England that it says are hotspots for the coronavirus variant first identified in India.

Lawmakers and local public health officials have said they had not been made aware of the changes that the Conservative government published online last Friday. In that updated guidance, it recommended that people within the eight localities, which includes Hounslow in west London, the central city of Leicester and the northwest towns of Blackburn and Bolton, should not meet up indoors or travel outside their areas.

Blackburn’s director of public health Professor Dominic Harrison said in a tweet that local authority areas affected were “not consulted with, warned of, notified about, or alerted” to the instruction changes.

Reintroducing local restrictions goes against the grain of the government's stated strategy. It has said it wants to lift restrictions on a national basis, without directly ruling out local measures to quash outbreaks.

Cabinet minister Teresa Coffey said the updated guidance should not be a surprise to anyone as it just formalized “on the record” the outlines of what Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been saying over the past couple of weeks when warning about the so-called Indian variant.

“The prime minister set out that we need to take extra caution in certain areas regarding the Indian variant," she said. “It is good practice to formally put that guidance on the record affecting those communities.”

6:27 a.m. The Czech Republic on Tuesday lost its fourth health minister since the coronavirus pandemic struck last year.

Prime Minister Andrej Babis said that the current office-holder Petr Arenberger called him in Brussels, where Babis is attending a summit of European Union leaders to announce his resignation.

Arenberger, the director of Prague’s University Hospital Vinohrady, was only sworn in by President Milos Zeman on April 7.

He has been recently under fire from the media due to alleged irregularities in his tax returns. He declared he owned more assets and had a higher income after he became a government minister than in the preceding years.

It also emerged that he was renting one of his undeclared properties to the university hospital. That deal was signed before he was appointed its director.

Babis said Arenberger and his family were under pressure and “that's the main reason” for the resignation, Babis said.

Babis said he planned to reappoint Adam Vojtech, who was health minister when the pandemic hit the country in March 2020, to the post.

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Arenberger took office after his predecessor, Jan Blatny, was fired over his handling of the pandemic, including imposing strict conditions for the use of experimental drugs to treat COVID-19 patients and refusal to accept Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, which has not been approved the European Union’s drug regulator.

Blatny had taken over the job on Oct. 29 to replace epidemiologist Roman Prymula, who was dismissed after he was photographed visiting a restaurant that should have been closed as part of the country’s restrictive measures.

Prymula had replaced Vojtech in the post on Sept. 21, to enable a different approach to the pandemic amid surging infections.

Infections are falling in the Czech Republic. The day-to-day tally of new cases dropped to 695 on Monday, down from almost 17,000 in early March.

6:23 a.m. (updated) Toronto has hit a new marker on the road to ending the pandemic with 65 per cent of adults in the city having received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine.

The next milestone — 2 million doses administered — appears to be days away.

The city announced Tuesday the 65-per-cent mark was hit during a Victoria Day weekend immunization blitz, one week ahead of Premier Doug Ford’s goal of reaching that vaccination rate for the province of Ontario.

“To date, 1,986,966 COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered in Toronto,” at clinics and pharmacies, a city news release states, including a half-million doses in the city’s nine clinics and by its mobile vaccination team.

Read the full story from the Star’s David Rider

5:37 a.m. Ontario residents who received a first dose of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in mid-March will be able to book their second shot this week as the province seeks to use up its stockpile before it expires.

The province's top doctor said last week that those who got their first jab of AstraZeneca between March 10 and March 19 during a pilot project at some pharmacies and doctors' offices will be prioritized for the second dose.

Though the recommended interval between shots is at least 12 weeks, the second injection is being offered to that group after 10 weeks in order to make use of 45,000 doses set to expire in roughly a week.

Another 10,000 doses of AstraZeneca are due to expire next month.

The province currently has more than 300,000 doses in stock.

Dr. David Williams, Ontario's chief medical officer of health, has said the shorter interval is safe and provides strong protection against COVID-19.

The province has said those who got their first dose of AstraZeneca after March 19 will be able to book their second in the near future, but no additional details have been provided so far.

AstraZeneca has been linked to rare, potentially fatal blood clots, prompting several provinces to recently stop using it as they await further research.

5:36 a.m. Restrictions put in place at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic are set to lift in Yukon Tuesday, paving the way for crowds to gather both in and outdoors.

Starting today, those who are fully vaccinated won't need to isolate for two weeks when they travel to the territory, social bubbles will increase to 20 people, bars and restaurants can return to full capacity, and weddings, funerals and religious services can increase to 200 people with physical distancing measures in place.

Those who travel to the territory but aren't fully vaccinated will be required to self-isolate for 14 days.

Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Brendan Hanley says Yukon has made "great progress" with its vaccination effort.

The territory says in a statement that Yukon leads the country in vaccinations for adults, noting youth aged 12 to 17 will be able to start getting their shots on May 31.

The territory aims to have youth fully vaccinated by mid-July.

5:34 a.m. A plan to be announced Tuesday will start to get life and the economy back to normal in British Columbia with the methodical lifting of COVID-19 health restrictions.

Premier John Horgan said last week the restart will set the course for a future direction as COVID-19 cases decline and more people receive vaccinations, but it will take time to reach the final destination.

The province had been entering Phase 3 of its restart plan when case counts climbed to new highs in March, forcing a stop of indoor dining, adult group fitness and non-essential travel outside health authorities, while health officials also backtracked on allowing in-person religious services.

Horgan said the plans involve the gradual lifting of health restrictions and by July the province will be in a much better place.

Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said the restart plan will take a measured approach as opposed to an immediate, full-scale reopening.

Walt Judas, B.C.'s Tourism Industry Association chief executive officer, says the non-essential travel restrictions were deeply felt by tourism operators who saw fishing, golfing and weekend getaway ventures dry up.

5:33 a.m. All Quebecers aged 12 and up can now book a COVID-19 vaccine through the province's online portal.

While some kids between the ages of 12 and 17 were able to get vaccinated at walk-in clinics over the weekend, as of today they're able to make appointments through the online booking system.

Health Minister Christian Dubé said last week that teens will also be able to get vaccinated through their schools on the weeks of June 7 and 14.

Those who consent will either be shuttled to vaccine centres or given shots at mobile clinics at their schools, depending on the region.

Dubé has said the province wants to make sure all kids and teens get a first shot by June 23 and are fully vaccinated around the time school resumes in the fall.

Kids 14 and up can decide on their own whether to get the shot, but those who are 12 and 13 will need consent from their parents.

Tuesday 5:20 a.m. Most of Alberta's students will return to in-person learning Tuesday.

Students have been attending classes online since May 7 when the government ordered all kindergarten to Grade 12 students be sent home for two weeks as the province dealt with surging COVID-19 case rates that threatened to overwhelm Alberta's hospitals.

Thousands of students in higher grades in Edmonton and Calgary had already been working from home.

Education Minister Adriana LaGrange said in a news release last week that the two-week plan has been successful in nearly all areas of the province, and she's confident all students will finish the remainder of the school year in the classroom.

The exception is kindergarten to Grade 12 students in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, which includes Fort McMurray, whose students will continue to learn from home until at least May 31.

The release explained that case numbers Wood Buffalo have not been trending downward at the same rate as in other regions.

9:28 p.m.: From California to Virginia, many states that faced devastating shortfalls in the depths of the pandemic recession now find themselves flush with tax revenues because of a rebounding economy and a soaring stock market. Lawmakers who worried about budget cuts are now proposing lucrative increases in school spending, tax cuts and direct payments to their residents.

That turnaround is partly the product of strong income tax receipts, particularly in states that heavily tax high earners and the wealthy, whose finances have fared well in the crisis. The unexpectedly rosy picture is raising pressure on President Joe Biden to repurpose hundreds of billions of dollars of federal aid approved this year, in order to help fund a potential bipartisan infrastructure deal.

Last week, Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, suggested that Biden and Republican negotiators look to “some of the funding that’s been sent to states already under the last few bills” to help pay for that agreement. “They don’t know how to use it,” Romney said. “They could use that money to finance part of the infrastructure relating to roads and bridges and transit.”

Some economists and budget experts support that push, arguing that the money could be better spent elsewhere and that states’ spending plans could add to a risk of rapid inflation breaking out across the country. Other researchers and local budget officials say that the federal aid is rescuing harder-hit cities and states, like New York City and Hawaii, from a cascade of layoffs and spending cuts.

Biden administration officials say they continue to support distributing the full $350 billion in state, local and tribal aid that was contained in the $1.9 trillion economic assistance package that Biden signed in March. They say the aid will help ensure that the economic rebound does not repeat the years of state and local budget cutting that followed the 2008 financial crisis, which slowed the recovery from recession and contributed to millions of Americans waiting years to reap its benefits.

“We still feel strongly that the state and local plan is critical to ensuring we have a strong insurance policy for the type of strong growth we want, the type of equitable recovery the country deserves,” Gene Sperling, a senior adviser to Biden who oversees fulfillment of the March assistance package, said in an interview, “and to coming back from the 1.3 million jobs lost at the state and local level.”

Read Monday’s rolling file

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Today’s coronavirus news: Ontario is reporting 1,039 COVID-19 cases and 33 deaths Tuesday and 1,449 and 8 deaths Monday; Ontarians who got 1st AstraZeneca shot mid-March can book 2nd dose - Toronto Star
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