Rise in COVID hospitalizations, Buy American challenges : In The News for April 19

In the last week, Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia and the Prairies have all reported an increase in hospitalizations from the virus and intensive care admissions have also inched slightly upwards in some provinces.

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Latest available data from the provinces shows Quebec had 2,220 people in hospital and Ontario had 1,301. There were 1,053 hospitalizations in Alberta, 403 in Saskatchewan, 158 in Manitoba and 59 in Nova Scotia.

Dr. Eddy Lang, department head of emergency medicine in Calgary for Alberta Health Services, said his province is in its sixth wave of the pandemic fuelled by the BA. 2 sub-variant of Omicron, but it’s not as dramatic as the original Omicron surge.

“No one in health care would support the ‘let it rip approach,’ but in terms of hospitalization capacity, we’re not seeing the same strain in our ICU capacity as we did with (the Delta variant) and we should be able to manage,” Lang said Monday.

He said wastewater analysis and data from the United Kingdom suggests hospitalizations could start to level off in mid-May.

March data from Health Canada shows unvaccinated people were eight times more likely to be hospitalized and 11 times more likely to die as a result of their illness than those who had three doses.

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Also this …

Almost one in four Canadian respondents to a new online survey said they had been infected with COVID-19, while about three in four had not.

As the country grapples with its sixth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and less data is shared with the public, the poll by Leger and the Association for Canadian Studies offers a picture of how many people have been infected.

Christian Bourque, Leger executive vice-president, said it was notable that the rate of reported infection sat higher than what the official data has suggested.

Thirty per cent of respondents aged 18 to 34 say they have been infected, while 12 per cent of those 55 years and older say so.

Bourque said this pattern matches the trend that the more social people are, the more vulnerable they are to contracting the virus.

Almost three in five respondents who had COVID-19 say they had mild symptoms, while one in five say they had severe symptoms that kept them in bed.

Conducted April 8 to 10, the online poll surveyed 1,538 Canadians and cannot be assigned a margin of error because internet-based polls are not considered random samples.

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And this too …

Canadian manufacturers are once again facing the risk of being hit by U.S. protectionism and the need to fight for crucial exemptions.

The challenge comes after the Biden administration announced new procurement guidance Monday that requires the construction material purchased for federally-funded infrastructure projects be produced in the U.S.

Dennis Darby, head of Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters, says Canada will have to work hard to secure carve-outs and waivers to protect access to the U.S. market, as it has done in previous challenges.

Key to those efforts will be emphasizing the integrated nature of the economies, where materials already flow freely across the border, and how Canada is rarely in a position to undercut U.S. prices.

Darby says the U.S. provisions are likely intended to be more targeted towards countries like China, where there are concerns about subsidized production and the exporting of products at problematically low prices.

The Buy American rules, part of the US $1-trillion infrastructure package that was passed into law last November, allow for several scenarios where the requirements could be waived, including if they’re inconsistent with public interest or if the materials aren’t produced in sufficient quantities or satisfactory quality domestically.

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What we are watching in the U.S. …

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. _ A federal judge’s decision to strike down a national mask mandate was met with cheers on some airplanes but also concern about whether it’s really time to end one of the most visible vestiges of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The major airlines and many of the busiest airports rushed to drop their requirements on Monday after the Transportation Security Administration announced it wouldn’t enforce a January 2021 security directive that applied to airplanes, airports, taxis and other mass transit.

But the ruling still gave those entities the option to keep their mask rules in place, resulting in directives that could vary from city to city.

Passengers on an United Airlines flight from Houston to New York, for instance, could ditch their masks at their departing airport and on the plane, but have to put them back on once they land at Kennedy Airport or take a subway.

In a 59-page lawsuit ruling, U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle in Tampa said the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention overstepped its authority in issuing the original health order on which the TSA directive was based. She also said the order was fatally flawed because the CDC didn’t follow proper rulemaking procedures.

Mizelle, an appointee of former president Donald Trump, said the only remedy was to throw out the mandate for the entire country because it would be impossible to end it only for the people who objected in the lawsuit.

The White House said the mask order “is not in effect at this time” and called the court decision disappointing. The Justice Department declined to comment on whether it would seek an emergency stay to block the judge’s order. The CDC also declined to comment.

United Airlines, Delta Air Lines and Alaska Airlines all quickly announced they were yanking the mask requirement for domestic and some international flights. So did American Airlines, Southwest Airlines and JetBlue Airways.

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What we are watching in the rest of the world …

KYIV, Ukraine _ Russian forces attacked along a broad front in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday as part of a full-scale ground offensive to take control of the country’s eastern industrial heartland in what Ukrainian officials called a “new phase of the war.”

Ukraine’s General Staff said early Tuesday that Russian forces are focusing their efforts on taking full control of the Donbas region.

“The occupiers made an attempt to break through our defences along nearly the entire frontline,” the General Staff said in a statement.

The stepped-up assaults began Monday along a front of more than 480 kilometres focused on the Donbas regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, with the Russian forces trying to advance in several sections, including from neighbouring Kharkiv.

In southern Donetsk, the General Staff said the Russian military has continued to blockade and shell the strategic port city of Mariupol and fire missiles at other cities.

On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address that a “significant part of the entire Russian army is now concentrated on this offensive.”

Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces for eight years in the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas and have declared two independent republics that have been recognized by Russia. Russia has declared the capture of the Donbas to be its main goal in the war since its attempt to seize the capital, Kyiv, failed.

“No matter how many Russian troops are driven there, we will fight,” Zelenskyy vowed. “We will defend ourselves.”

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On this day in 2001 …

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield began his second spaceflight as the shuttle “Endeavour” was launched. On the fourth day of the 13-day mission, Hadfield became the first Canadian to walk in space.

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In entertainment …

TORONTO _ Arcade Fire is going for five on “Saturday Night Live.”

The Montreal rockers have been announced as the musical guest on the May 7 show hosted by actor Benedict Cumberbatch.

It’s the fifth time they’ve played the show under their own name, and the sixth if you count when they were the backing band for Mick Jagger in 2012, a role they shared that night with Foo Fighters.

That puts them among an elite group of musical guests who’ve hit the “SNL” stage at least five times, including Miley Cyrus, James Taylor, Kanye West, Rihanna and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Fellow Canadian Neil Young has played the show four times, while Paul Simon has been the musical guest an astounding 14 times over his career.

Arcade Fire is getting ready to roll out their new album “WE,” which will be released the day before their “SNL” appearance.

The band also recently announced they will replace Foo Fighters at Montreal’s Osheaga festival on July 29.

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Did you see this?

OTTAWA _ What began as a 30-day fundraising campaign to help Afghan interpreters flee the Taliban turned into a harrowing, chaotic and deeply frustrating eight-month effort for the Veterans Transition Network, and its executive director says it’s time for that to end.

The group started raising money last summer when the Taliban swept to power in Afghanistan, but executive director Oliver Thorne says no one anticipated how long it would be involved.

“This has sort of transformed from a crisis evacuation effort into a long-term migration effort,” said Thorne.

The network is ending its public fundraising on May 2, winding down operations over the next six months and returning its focus to mental health programming for Canadian veterans.

Non-governmental organizations led by veterans have been helping people who worked with the Canadian Armed Forces get out of Afghanistan and head to neighbouring countries, then on to Canada.

Thorne says “bureaucratic hoops” are making it difficult to help people get the proper paperwork and causing a bottleneck, and he’s calling on the federal government to resume consular services in Afghanistan.

“The ability to provide consular support in Afghanistan would alleviate a lot of these tensions,” he said. “That’s where we’re really seeing the bottleneck.”

The federal government has pledged to resettle 40,000 Afghan refugees and so far more than 10,600 people have arrived in Canada.

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 19, 2022.

The Canadian Press

by Canadian Press

Rise in COVID hospitalizations, Buy American challenges : In The News for April 19

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