China said on Thursday it would donate a further $30 million US to the World Health Organization (WHO), which is seeking more than $1 billion to fund its battle against the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 180,000 people worldwide.
The donation aimed to support the global fight against COVID-19, in particular strengthening health systems in developing countries, foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said. She noted that China had already donated $20 million to the WHO on March 11.
“At this crucial moment, supporting WHO is supporting multilateralism and global solidarity,” Hua said on Twitter.
The pledge comes about a week after U.S. President Donald Trump announced that U.S. funding would be halted while Washington reviewed the WHO’s role “in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus.” The review, he said, was likely to take 60 to 90 days.
Trump accused the Geneva-based organization of promoting Chinese “disinformation” about the virus, which emerged in the central city of Wuhan last year.
On Wednesday, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he hoped the Trump administration would reconsider its decision.
“I hope the U.S. believes that this an important investment, not just to help others, but for the U.S. to stay safe also,” Tedros said during a virtual briefing.
U.S. contributions are appropriated by Congress
The United States contributed more than $400 million to the WHO in 2019, or roughly 15 per cent of the organization’s budget.
The WHO’s 2020-2021 budget, approved by health ministers last May, amounts to nearly $4.85 billion in total and represents a 9 per cent rise from the previous two-year period.
WATCH | WHO’s Dr. Mike Ryan rejects U.S. claim:
The World Health Organization has defended its handling of the coronavirus outbreak after President Donald Trump orders withdrawal of U.S. funding for the organization. 2:55
Trump’s announcement drew international condemnation, coming as it did just over one month after the WHO declared the spread of the novel coronavirus a pandemic, and there are fears it could impact other efforts in global health. The U.S. provides several hundred million dollars to the WHO every year in voluntary funding tied to specific programs like polio eradication, vaccine-preventable disease, HIV and hepatitis, tuberculosis, and maternal and newborn health.
It also set up another potential fight on Capitol Hill in Washington. The White House in normal times does not have the ability to unilaterally redirect funding, which is appropriated by Congress.
After Trump made his announcement, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said it was “dangerous, illegal and will be swiftly challenged.”
Some Democrats even said they may try to include funding for the WHO in the next coronavirus relief bill.
A car pulled up to a convenience store, and four people hopped out. One had a baseball bat. What ensued was a fight over $180, one participant later said.
By the time it was over, guns were drawn, shots were exchanged, and one bullet tore into a nearby car, striking the head of five-year-old Kearria Attison.
The girl died. Before fleeing the scene, one of the people involved reportedly offered the girl’s mother a quick apology.
Several people now face murder charges for the deadly shooting in Jacksonville, Fla., on April 6, which police say involved individuals with violent pasts.
“Too bad these criminals haven’t taken time off during the COVID-19 outbreak,” one woman posted on the police department’s Facebook page.
Court records from Duval County, Fla., describe the confrontation that led to the shooting death of five-year-old Kearria Attison. (Duval County Clerk Of Courts)
Some preliminary data suggests she’s right.
It does indeed appear that not even a deadly pandemic has halted the spread of another scourge in the United States: gun violence.
This despite lockdown orders, a historic pause in school shootings, and statistical evidence that people aren’t moving around much these days.
That grim reality has been underscored in Canada, too, which experienced the deadliest mass shooting in the country’s history last weekend in Nova Scotia. In Toronto, there have been dozens of shootings since early March.
Overall, killings are down slightly in Toronto compared to last year. In some American cities, there’s been no slowdown at all.
In fact, some U.S. cities have seen an increase.
Gang shootings ‘do not slow down’
Mark Bryant, who tracks U.S. shootings for the Gun Violence Archive, said it will take a while to properly analyze the data for the COVID-19 pandemic.
But what he detects so far is an increase in gang shootings and domestic violence, amid a drop in workplace and school shootings.
“[Gang shootings] are like the Energizer bunny — they do not slow down. They’re as consistent as can be,” he said.
Shootings were more frequent than normal in Detroit early this month. They were also higher in Washington, D.C. While other crimes were down, the city website registered 12 homicides over the last month, up from six in the same period last year.
“Unfortunately, gun crimes are mostly unchanged,” is how Washington’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, put it during a news conference this week.
COVID-19 has devastated some police departments in the U.S. The New York Police Department has been hit particularly hard. (Andrew Kelly/Reuters)
Even with New York City paralyzed by the pandemic, homicide trends have barely budged. Data released by the NYPD shows 18 homicides in a 28-day period ending April 12 compared to 20 for the same period last year. The data doesn’t specify how many were caused by guns.
Last weekend alone in Chicago, at least five people were killed and 28 were wounded by gun violence. Killings are down this spring compared with March-April 2019, but the overall annual numbers are still up.
After six people were shot this month at a large party in an apartment complex in Bakersfield, Calif., several people fumed on the county sheriff’s Facebook page. “Churches can’t meet or they face trouble but a lawless group gathers,” said a post from Norma Jean Onyschuk.
Some historical perspective
The long-term trend isn’t totally bleak.
Gun violence is still short of its worst peaks in the 1970s and 1990s in the United States. Yet it began trending upward in 2015 after years of decline, with both homicides and suicides on the rise.
And it’s not just an urban phenomenon, as it’s frequently portrayed.
When taking into account suicides as well as homicides, the three U.S. states with the highest per capita rate of firearm deaths are Alaska, Alabama and Montana.
Gun sales have surged during the pandemic. A pedestrian pushes a stroller as people wait in line last month outside a gun store in Culver City, Calif. (Patrick T. Fallon/Reuters)
In several cities, though, police forces are now especially overwhelmed.
The pandemic has spread through numerous police departments, sickening hundreds of officers.
The head of Detroit’s homicide division died from the illness, and the chief of police was also sickened, and is recovering. Dozens of New York City officers have died; the NYPD’s chief of transportation was on life-support.
Hundreds of Chicago police officers have tested positive and the force is among several reportedly working on obtaining antibody testing.
Many city police forces also report an uptick in domestic violence in their communities.
In one case, a man in a Chicago suburb fatally shot his wife and himself.
Their family told police the man feared they had COVID-19.
U.S. federal data began showing a spike in shootings in 2015, after a historic decline. (Pew Research)
There are different theories about what variables are driving the uptick in gun violence of recent years.
Some blame the opioid epidemic, and its effect on the drug trade. Some blame small street gangs, with younger members, whose feuds escalate quickly on social media.
Some police blame the so-called Ferguson effect — that’s the much-debated idea that protests against police brutality a few years ago, in addition to deadly attacks on officers, caused police to scale back their interventions.
A few studies point to one glaring fact of American life: the country has many, many guns.
Researchers from the University of Missouri-St. Louis suggest assaults and robberies are becoming deadlier because guns are used more often.
A paper published by the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2018 finds access to firearms highly correlated to rates of firearm death.
At Harvard, David Hemenway, director of the university’s Injury Control Center, said the proliferation of guns makes the U.S. unique among developed countries.
Mark Bryant, co-founder of the Gun Violence Archive, said there are too many guns in too many irresponsible hands.
He’s a Kentucky resident who owns firearms himself. He said he has them locked away in a safe, and there are a few steps required to get them out. He joked that if he were ever in a frantic fight he’d probably forget the safe combination.
Gang members aren’t taking those precautions, he said.
“These guys have guns parked everywhere. They’ve got a gun in the couch,” he said.
“Shootings start out as someone being smacked around. Then it escalates, due to alcohol, or drugs, or anger. Then a gun comes out. And with 50, 60 million people [in this country] having guns, the likelihood [of violence] … is more frequent.”
Meanwhile, gun sales surged early in the pandemic.
The New York Times reported that the nearly two million firearm sales last month represented the biggest spike since President Barack Obama began a gun-control push seven years ago in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre.
After more than a month confined to dry land without being immersed in the salt and sea, New Zealander Zen Wallis says it feels like he’s living in someone else’s body.
“It’s really strange to not go into the water,” the professional surfer told CBC News in an interview by Skype. “My skin feels different; my hair feels different.”
Surfing has been one of the casualties of New Zealand’s extreme COVID-19 lockdown introduced in mid-March, one of the most stringent virus-fighting regimes anywhere in the world.
Wallis, 28, runs a surfing school in Piha on New Zealand’s North Island, about 40 kilometres southwest of Auckland.
Coming at the tail end of the Southern Hemisphere’s summer, his classes would normally have been full, he says, and he’d have been in water for as long as there was daylight.
The deserted beach in Piha, New Zealand, which is normally filled with surfers. (Luke Darby)
“It was an interesting call to make — to actually make [surfing] criminal,” he said.
But with the end of the prohibition on surfing and many other activities now just days away, Wallis says he feels the gains in New Zealand probably made the ban worthwhile.
“We may be able to open New Zealand back up if we can ‘crush’ this,” he said of the government’s stated goal of eradicating the infection.
Eradicate COVID-19
On Monday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that what New Zealand calls its Alert Level 4 measures — the most intense level — would last until end of day April 27, after which the country will revert to Alert Level 3, a level with greater freedoms.
“We have done what few countries have been able to do — we have stopped a wave of devastation,” said Ardern, who has received widespread praise both at home and abroad for taking early, decisive action against COVID-19.
“The number of cases that each person with the virus passes it on to is now 0.48, less than half a person each. Overseas, the average is 2.5 people, so we have among the lowest number of confirmed cases per 100,000 people in the world.”
As of Tuesday, the country of five million people had registered 1,445 cases and just 13 deaths, most of them in nursing homes.
The majority of those infected have also now recovered.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern speaks to media March 13. ‘We have done what few countries have been able to do — we have stopped a wave of devastation,’ she said April 20. (Martin Hunter/Reuters)
For much of March and April, under the Alert Level 4 lockdown, only essential trips to the grocery store and pharmacies were permitted, along with brief trips outside for exercise. Swimming at the beach — and surfing — were not designated as essential activities, and related businesses closed.
Stringent measures
The measures, in place since March 25, go significantly beyond what most Canadian provinces have brought in.
In British Columbia, for example, restaurants have been serving takeout food, many public parks and beaches have remained open, organizations such as Amazon and Canada Post have been making deliveries and some retailers have been able to continue with in-store sales as long as they abide by physical distancing guidelines.
Whereas most countries have focused on “flattening the curve” of cases to ensure health-care systems aren’t overwhelmed at the peak of infections, New Zealand’s government decided early on it would go a big step further and try to wipe out COVID-19 completely.
Siouxsie Wiles is a microbiologist and associate professor at the University of Auckland. (Siouxsie Wiles/Skype)
“It’s only a viable strategy if you do it early enough. It becomes harder to do it the longer you leave it,” said Siouxsie Wiles, an infectious disease expert at the University of Auckland.
Wiles, with striking, bright pink hair and an easy way of communicating difficult concepts, has become something of a national celebrity since the beginning of the epidemic with near daily appearances on local media.
Measles outbreak
In an interview with CBC News, she said one of the key considerations for Ardern’s government in adopting the strictest measures possible, was the interconnectedness the country has with many small Pacific islands that were in an extremely poor position to fight COVID-19.
“We saw last year in Samoa, when we exported measles, how absolutely devastating it was to them. They just don’t have the health-care system we have.”
Andrew Chang asks an infectious disease doctor whether it’s safer to be indoors or outdoors during the coronavirus pandemic. 1:02
In 2019, the small nation in the South Pacific registered almost 6,000 cases of measles resulting in 84 deaths. Scientists believe the disease was carried there by an infected patient who arrived on an Air New Zealand flight.
After April 27, Wiles says the plan is to keep New Zealand’s borders closed to international travellers and to carefully track every new COVID-19 case that turns up, seeking out and isolating anyone who had contact with the infected person.
“If your contact tracing and testing is good enough, then you can minimize outbreaks — you can find cases and stop that spread.”
The surfing community of Piha, on New Zealand’s north island, is a ghost town after an intense, one-month lockdown. (Luke Darby)
While New Zealand health officials have not released the raw data on their capacity to contact trace, several independent experts brought in as consultants have agreed with the Ardern government’s approach and that New Zealand is in a position to make contact tracing work.
Incomplete data
Opposition politicians, however, insist the lockdown could have ended even sooner if the government had been more forthright about its ability to monitor the spread of the virus.
“This is a real shame, as businesses will suffer further damage, and that will lead to poor health outcomes as a result of the huge stress this will cause for a lot of people,” said opposition National Party Leader Simon Bridges.
Practically speaking, Alert Level 3 will leave New Zealanders freer than Canadians in some ways but not in others.
People will be able to extend their “bubble,” as health officials refer to it, by having caregivers or cleaners return to their homes, for example, as long as those workers don’t also visit other homes.
Schools will open for elementary and middle school students, but the expectation is that any student who is in a position to continue with online learning from home will do so.
Wallis is ready to get back in the water, having been beached for the past month because of COVID-19. (Luke Darby)
Industries such as construction and forestry will be allowed to resume. Restaurants will not be able to open up for table service, but takeout will be permitted.
And people will be able to head to the beach again to surf.
Relapse possible
After two weeks, if there is no COVID-19 relapse, the prime minister said the nation could move down to Alert Level 2 by the middle of May, which would permit even greater freedoms.
Taiwan and South Korea have had similar success to New Zealand’s in cornering the virus, though Singapore, which was also seen as a textbook case, is now experiencing a dramatic second-wave of infections after initially relaxing its prohibitions.
Wiles says it is still too soon to know when international flights will resume to New Zealand but she says she expects the first steps may be to resume flying to other nations, such as Taiwan, or those in the South Pacific, that have also virtually wiped out the infection.
“We may end up having countries around the world that are these little islands that you could travel between,” she said.
“Going forward, it’s an interesting thing how you maintain [a virus free status].”
All of that is heartening news for Zen Wallis, who is planning to be back in the water first thing once the surf ban is lifted.
“I’m psyched up. I am getting ready now,” he said.
Still, after that instant rush, he says, he worries about how long it will take his business and so many others to recover.
“I am sure people are going to want to surf, but obviously, there’s no tourism.”
A handful of mostly southern U.S. states will begin loosening economic restrictions this week in the midst of a still virulent pandemic, providing a live-fire test of whether the country’s communities can start to reopen without triggering a surge that may force them to close again.
The Republican governors of Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Ohio all announced on Monday they would begin peeling back the curbs on commerce and social activity aimed at stopping the coronavirus outbreak over the next two weeks. Colorado’s Democratic governor said on Tuesday he would open retail stores on May 1.
Georgia has been hardest-hit of these states, with 19,000 cases and nearly 800 deaths, including a dense cluster in a rural area in the state’s southwest.
Amid a national debate over how to fight the virus while mitigating the deep economic toll, these moves are the first to test the borders of resuming “normal” life, though none of the states has met basic White House guidelines unveiled last week of two weeks of declining cases before a state should reopen.
Republican President Donald Trump, who has been eager to end a lockdown that has crushed the U.S. economy in an election year, tweeted his apparent support on Wednesday morning for the governors who are loosening physical distancing guidelines that had shut businesses and largely confined residents to their homes.
“States are safely coming back. Our Country is starting to OPEN FOR BUSINESS again,” he tweeted, though it is not yet clear how safe it will be.
A mural of a female health worker is seen through a fence in Chicago on Tuesday. (Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)
The decision to ease restrictions has pitted some business owners and others keen to get the economy up and running again against a wary public and health officials warning of a potential resurgence in cases.
“It’s a matter of concern, this whole idea of opening up. It’s based on non-science generated parameters,” Dr. Boris Lushniak, dean of the University of Maryland School of Public Health, told Reuters in an interview.
A Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll showed a majority of Americans believed stay-at-home orders should remain in place until public health officials determine lifting them is safe, despite the damage to the U.S. economy. It’s a finding in line with most other polls on the same subject, despite significant media coverage in the U.S. for a smattering of protests against stay-at-home orders, most which have numbered in the low hundreds.
‘Unprecedented burden on civil liberties’: Barr
Deaths from COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by coronavirus, top 45,150 countrywide as cases climbed to more than 810,000, according to a Reuters tally.
Tensions between Trump and local officials have risen over the U.S. government’s role in ramping up testing — which infectious disease experts say is key to enable a safe reopening — and his stated sympathy for protesters feeling economic pain.
WATCH l ‘Give me liberty or give me death’:
Thousands of people frustrated by the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown protested in Harrisburg, Pa., on Tuesday. 2:02
The president’s sentiment was seemingly echoed by U.S. Attorney General William Barr on Tuesday.
“These are unprecedented burdens on civil liberties right now. You know, the idea that you have to stay in your house is disturbingly close to house arrest,” Barr told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.
“We didn’t adopt them as the comprehensive way of dealing with this disease,” he said.
Barr added the Justice Department is closely examining the various stay-at-home orders.
“And if we think one goes too far, we initially try to jawbone the governors into rolling them back or adjusting them,” Barr said, without specifying which states he believed fit that description.
Testing an ‘enormous undertaking’: Cuomo
Experts say the United States, with a population of nearly 330 million people, should test three million per week to get an accurate sense of the virus’s reach. States have tested only one-third of that number in the past seven days, according to the COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer organization launched by The Atlantic.
“We’ve got to get more testing done before we make any public health decisions,” said Lushniak.
There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through.– CDC director Robert Redfield
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo emerged from a meeting with Trump at the White House on Tuesday and said the president had agreed to help his state procure chemical reagents and other supplies needed to double testing capacity.
The governor said New York would try to double the number of people it tests each day — including diagnostic and antibody tests — to 40,000, characterizing the task as an “enormous undertaking” that would take weeks.
Even as states move ahead with plans to reopen, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned a second wave of the coronavirus could be worse if it coincides with the start of seasonal flu season.
“There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through,” CDC Director Robert Redfield said in an interview with the Washington Post published on Tuesday.
Former FDA chief questions Georgia plan
Brian Kemp, Georgia’s Republican governor, said his plan to reopen balances public health with the need to reignite the state’s economy, saying physical distancing rules would remain in place. The order supercedes anything cities or counties have in place, he said Tuesday.
Employees at Forza Storico, an Italian restaurant in Atlanta, attach reheating instructions to meals for health-care workers on Tuesday. Later this week, Georgia will see a phased reopening of restaurants and several other types of businesses. (Elijah Nouvelage/Reuters)
“Don’t go out,” Savannah Mayor Van Johnson, a Democrat, told residents of the eastern Georgia city during a news conference. “People will not come here if they think our businesses are not safe.”
Kemp said he would allow a broad swathe of businesses from barbershops to tattoo parlors to reopen on Friday under enhanced rules for hygiene, distancing among employees and use of masks.
“Gyms, nail salons, bowling alleys, hair salons, tattoo parlors — it feels like they collected, you know, a list of the businesses that were most risky and decided to open those first,” Scott Gottlieb, former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, told CNBC on Tuesday.
On Monday, movie theaters, restaurants and private clubs in Georgia will be allowed to open, with some restrictions.
First came the big announcement: President Donald Trump declared via Twitter that he would suspend immigration to the United States.
Now comes the considerable fine print.
It appears the order will spare vast categories of temporary visa-holders, based on the initial details described by the president on Tuesday.
In fact, some of Trump’s supporters complain it doesn’t actually do much.
Trump said he will sign an order, either Wednesday or Thursday, that will, for at least 60 days and possibly longer, pause processing of immigration applications.
It creates additional uncertainty for a few thousand Canadians awaiting permanent resident status in the U.S. Last year, 17,821 Canadians gained that status — most of whom already lived in the U.S. under a non-immigration work visa.
“We’ll help put unemployed Americans first in line for jobs as America reopens. So important,” Trump told a news conference Tuesday.
“We must first take care of the American worker.”
Work visas: untouched
But the announcement doesn’t actually apply to work visas. Huge numbers of Canadians and other foreigners live in the U.S. as non-immigrants, under visas tied to their jobs.
Canadians made more than one million trips to the U.S. in 2018 under such visas linked to their employment, or to a family member’s employment. Some of these visa-holders include Canadians fighting the pandemic in U.S. hospitals.
Trump said he’ll decide after 60 days whether to extend the order.
A Canadian immigration lawyer said the fact that temporary foreign workers are currently exempt is great news for them, and for the many U.S. companies that rely on visa-holding foreigners.
“Many people will be relieved,” said Andrea Vaitzner, a lawyer at Norton Rose Fulbright in Montreal. “But at the same time, I suspect many will be waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
That’s because Trump issued a warning Tuesday: he did not rule out the possibility of eventually extending the freeze to additional categories.
He also said the details of this initial order were still being worked out. “It’s being written now,” Trump said during the news conference.
Does this order actually do anything?
One Fox News host blasted the announcement.
“If it was to protect American jobs, it failed,” said Tucker Carlson, a Trump supporter and immigration hawk. He accused Trump’s entourage of watering it down.
“How did this happen, exactly? We’re not sure, but we do plan to find out.”
The order would delay processing of permanent-residency applications — more than one million people from around the world gained that immigration status in the U.S. last year.
U.S. immigration offices were already closed because of the pandemic, raising the question of just how much of a difference the president’s 60-day freeze order will make. (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services)
But it’s not clear how much immigration is actually happening right now, raising the question of how many cases this order will actually affect.
U.S. immigration offices were already shuttered amid the pandemic. Air Canada had already cancelled flights to the U.S. And non-essential travel was suspended between Canada and the U.S. at the border.
What is clear, however, is that the announcement was instantaneously thrust into presidential politics.
Presidential politics
Trump’s campaign began pumping out texts to supporters about the move.
One immigration expert said the act was more about politics than policy.
“This is a move without enormous practical implications,” said Justin Gest, a professor at George Mason University in Virginia.
“More than anything, it’s an attempt to distract from the administration’s incompetent response to the global pandemic.”
The administration has faced significant criticism for its handling of the outbreak in the U.S., which has killed more than 44,000 Americans.
Trump has looked to adapt his coronavirus message to fit the nationalist, America First theme he’s campaigning on.
In recent days, Trump has frozen funding for one global institution, the World Health Organization, and accused it of covering up Chinese mishandling of the COVID-19 outbreak. He’s blasted Democratic rival Joe Biden as too China-friendly. Now, he’s limited immigration as part of his pandemic response.
A screenshot of a text message sent to supporters by the Trump campaign. (Trump campaign)
Meanwhile, people who normally live their lives on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border are already feeling unique anxiety.
April Umbenhower, for one, doesn’t know when she’ll see her fiance again.
The Kingsville, Ont., woman and her Michigan-dwelling boyfriend are planning to marry, and don’t know how long travel restrictions will keep them apart.
“All you can do is hope and pray at this point. Because that’s all you can do,” she said in an interview.
“We’re at a complete standstill.”
She works at a hardware store in Ontario; her boyfriend, Steven Husak, works in the financial sector near Detroit.
He’s planning to immigrate to Canada to be with her.
“You talk about your wedding date and preparing to maybe have children together,” Husak said. “And you have to put it on hold without a timetable.”
He’s hoping that, before long, COVID-19 tests might be readily available, and given to people trying to cross the border.
Speaking during his daily COVID-19 update on Tuesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a new $350-million emergency community support fund meant to help vulnerable Canadians, as he said the pandemic has worsened inequalities throughout the country.
That fund is aimed at helping community organizations, charities and non-profits, which have had to change how they help groups like seniors and those experiencing homelessness, Trudeau said.
“Their mission has always been to support people in their time of need, and that hasn’t changed,” Trudeau said. “But COVID-19 is putting a tremendous amount of pressure on those organizations, because more people need help.”
Trudeau also said the government is launching a calculator for businesses to use when applying for the emergency wage subsidy, which gives employers up to $847 dollars per employee each week. That calculator, which will be hosted on the Canada Revenue Agency website, will allow companies to determine exactly how much the subsidy will cover.
Applications for the program will open on April 27, he said. At a later press briefing, Treasury Board President Jean-Yves Duclos said the government anticipated 90 per cent of applications would be processed by May 5.
Trudeau also spoke of the difficulties Canadians have gone through while practising physical distancing for nearly six weeks. He said there are early signs that those measures have helped reduce the spread of COVID-19. Health officials in provinces across Canada are reminding people to stick with public health measures, however, even as some regions see a drop in new cases of COVID-19.
WATCH | Trudeau addresses outbreak in Alberta meat processing plant:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke to reporters on Tuesday 1:00
Ontario on Monday released updated modelling that suggested community spread of COVID-19 appears to have peaked. But the health experts who presented the updated information noted that the spread of the virus in long-term care is still growing.
“We’re at peak in the community, but still in that accelerating upswing of the curve in long-term care,” said Adalsteinn Brown, dean of the University of Toronto’s public health department.
Morrison: “We are going to need to live with COVID-19 … there’s not a switch where things will quickly return to normal. There has to be a balance going forward.”<br><br>She says it’s a challenging to lift restrictions and manage the virus when there is no vaccine.
The World Health Organization said Tuesday that rushing to ease coronavirus restrictions will likely lead to a resurgence of the illness, a warning that comes as governments start rolling out plans to get their economies up and running again.
“This is not the time to be lax. Instead, we need to ready ourselves for a new way of living for the foreseeable future,” said Dr. Takeshi Kasai, the WHO regional director for the Western Pacific.
He said governments must remain vigilant to stop the spread of the virus, and the lifting of lockdowns and other physical distancing measures must be done gradually and strike the right balance between keeping people healthy and allowing economies to function. UN agencies on Tuesday made an appeal for more funding to help the most vulnerable, saying: “In this race against an invisible enemy, all countries must fight back, but not all begin from the same starting line.”
As of 4:45 p.m. ET on Tuesday, Canada had 38,210 confirmed and presumptive coronavirus cases. The provinces and territories that provide public information on recoveries listed 13,156 cases as recovered or resolved. A CBC News count of coronavirus-related deaths based on provincial data, local public health information and CBC’s own reporting has recorded 1,884 coronavirus-related deaths in Canada. There have been two reported COVID-19-related deaths of Canadians abroad.
The Public Health Agency of Canada says COVID-19 is a “serious health threat” in Canada. “The risk will vary between and within communities, but given the increasing number of cases in Canada, the risk to Canadians is considered high.”
The novel coronavirus, formally known as SARS-CoV-2, was first reported in China in late 2019. There are no proven treatments or vaccines for the virus, though researchers around the world are racing to find answers as to what might be effective against it.
Read on for a look at what’s happening in Canada, the U.S. and around the world.
Here’s a look at what’s happening in the provinces and territories
In Alberta, one day after the closure of a meat-processing plant in High River, another facility with dozens of COVID-19 cases among its employees says it is down to one shift due to “increased absenteeism” but will continue to operate. The JBS plant in Brooks had 67 confirmed cases, but no one has been laid off. Read more about what’s happening in Alberta.
Shoppers are separated by rows of wood pallets to help with physical distancing as they line up to enter a Costco store in Burnaby, B.C., on Sunday. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press)
Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe is expected to announce a plan for how some businesses and services may be allowed to start reopening if case numbers stay low. The province reported four new confirmed cases of COVID-19 Tuesday, bringing the provincial total to 320. Read more about what’s happening in Saskatchewan.
Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister said he’s taking a 25 per cent pay cut as he pushes for cuts in the public sector. Pallister is asking public sector workers to accept reduced work weeks, job sharing or temporary layoffs to help the government redirect spending to health care during the pandemic. Read more about what’s happening in Manitoba.
Ontario’s numbers climbed to 11,735 as the province announced 551 new cases Tuesday morning, a day after models suggested community spread has peaked. The number of cases in long-term care homes in the province is still on the rise, though. Read more about what’s happening in Ontario, including an analysis of the latest projections and what they mean for people in the province.
WATCH | Ontario COVID-19 cases may have peaked in general population:
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Quebec saw 102 additional deaths on Tuesday, becoming the first province with more than 1,000 deaths, with 850 of them having occurred in long-term care homes. The professional organizations representing doctors and nurses in the province announced Tuesday they would be looking into two such facilities that have seen a high number of deaths. The treatment of residents as a result of staff shortages in those facilities has also come under scrutiny. Read more about what’s happening in Quebec.
On Tuesday, New Brunswick reported no new cases for the third straight day, although Premier Blaine Higgs warned residents they would “need to adapt to a new normal” once the province begins to gradually reopen. Read more about what’s happening in N.B.
“It’s too early to entertain any real changes to the Canada-U.S. border,” said New Brunswick Premier <a href=”https://twitter.com/BlaineHiggs?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@BlaineHiggs</a>. Earlier this week, U.S. President Donald Trump said the Canada-U.S. border “will be one of the early borders to be released” from travel restrictions. <a href=”https://t.co/dYz2kc91U0″>pic.twitter.com/dYz2kc91U0</a>
Newfoundland and Labrador also marked their third straight day with no new cases, though the province’s chief medical officer emphatically stated that the struggle isn’t over. “No new cases to report over the last couple of days is indeed promising, but we must remain cautious with our optimism. I cannot stress enough that we are not yet in the clear,” Dr. Janice Fitzgerald Tuesday. Read more about what’s happening in N.L.
Nova Scotia reported one COVID-19 death on Tuesday at a long-term care facility in Halifax. That brings the total number of deaths to 10, while 16 new reported COVID-19 cases bring the province’s case total to 737. Read more about what’s happening in Nova Scotia, which is still reeling after at least 22 people were killed by a man who also died in an hours-long shooting rampage over the weekend.
Prince Edward Island reported no new cases on Tuesday, and the province is looking at lifting some restrictions put in place by early May, Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Heather Morrison said. Read more about what’s happening in P.E.I.
From The Associated Press and Reuters, updated at 4:30 p.m. ET
U.S. President Donald Trump’s new executive order banning immigration to the United States will apply narrowly to those seeking permanent immigration status, a senior administration official said on Tuesday.
The order will have a time frame of 30-90 days and be renewable, the official said, and could be ready in time for Trump to sign as early as Tuesday or Wednesday.
“In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens, I will be signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!” Trump tweeted late Monday.
Much of the immigration system has already ground to a halt because of the pandemic. Almost all visa processing by the State Department has been suspended for weeks. Travel to the U.S. has been restricted from much of the globe, including China, Europe, Mexico and Canada. And Trump has used the virus to effectively end asylum at U.S. borders, turning away even children who arrive by themselves — something Congress, the courts and international law hadn’t previously allowed.
The U.S. is now reporting more COVID-19 cases than any other country in the world, with almost 800,000 Americans infected, according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University. More than 42,000 have died.
With health authorities and many governors warning that far more testing is needed before the U.S. economy can be safely reopened, New York state launched the nation’s most ambitious effort yet to screen the general population for exposure to the virus.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said testing has to get up to scale before reopening can happen, adding that he was aware some people were unhappy they had to wear masks or engage in physical distancing. “It’s not a question of happy — it’s a question of life and death.”
At least three more states — South Carolina, Colorado and Georgia — have moved to loosen restrictions on commerce.
Stay-at-home orders and widespread business closures imposed in most states to slow the spread of the virus have stifled the U.S. economy and thrown at least 22 million people out of work, a level of unemployment not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
A medical worker, centre, takes a sample from the nose of a woman at a coronavirus testing tent outside MGH Healthcare Center on Monday in Chelsea, Mass. (Steven Senne/The Associated Press)
The economic damage has led to increasing agitation for relaxing physical distancing restrictions, especially as the rate of coronavirus hospitalizations and other indicators of the outbreak’s severity have begun to level off in parts of the country in recent days. In Pennsylvania, where Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf has pledged to veto a bill in the Republican-led General Assembly that would force him to reopen some businesses, several hundred demonstrators, some in cars with horns blaring, rallied in Harrisburg, the state capital.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is a member of the White House coronavirus task force, told ABC News there would be no real economic recovery until authorities got the virus under control and jumping the gun could lead to a big spike in cases.
Here’s a look at what’s happening around the world
From The Associated Press and Reuters, updated at 4:30 p.m. ET
In Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed concerns Tuesday that people haven’t followed physical distancing measures as much as they’re supposed to under a state of emergency he declared two weeks ago to fight the spread of the coronavirus. Abe asked citizens to do more to prevent Japanese health-care systems from collapsing.
Abe made a stay-at-home request on April 7 to reduce social interactions by as much as 80 per cent in an effort to limit infections. But surveys show movement of people was not down that much at major train stations, and even less in downtown areas where restaurants and grocery stores are still operating.
WATCH | Manufacturing picks up at some workplaces after COVID-19 shutdown
France and South Korea begin to open some workplaces with new safety rules and more modest production targets. 1:15
The Netherlands extended its three-month ban on major public events on Tuesday. Prime Minister Mark Rutte said the ban would now be in place until Sept. 1, although he added that an “encouraging” slowing of the spread of the coronavirus would enable elementary schools and daycare centres to reopen in May.
WATCH | How to handle physical distancing in tricky situations:
Physical distancing has radically changed how we socialize. But there’s still some scenarios where it’s difficult to limit our physical contact with others. Here’s how to best navigate them. 3:23
Ireland also banned major events on Tuesday until the end of August, while the government will decide what to do about smaller gatherings closer to May 5 when restrictions put in place on March 24 are due to expire.
Spain cancelled its July running of the bulls in Pamplona, the more than 400-year-old event made famous by Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises. The event was also called off during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.
The country did slightly loosen some restrictions on Tuesday, announcing children would be allowed to go for walks beginning next weekend. The change came hours after the government first announced that young children, who are currently banned from leaving home under any circumstances, would be allowed to accompany their parents on essential trips such as to buy food or medicine.
Crowds of youths in the outskirts of Paris targeted riot police with fireworks and torched rubbish bins in a third night of unrest, in areas where a heavy police presence to enforce a lockdown has exacerbated tensions. Trouble first flared in Villeneuve-La-Garenne on Saturday after a motorcyclist crashed into the open door of a police car, with unrest also breaking out Monday night into Tuesday in the neighbouring districts of Gennevilliers, Clichy-La-Garenne and Asnieres.
France‘s lockdown permits people to leave home only to buy groceries, go to work, seek medical care or exercise. French President Emmanuel Macron said schools and shops would gradually reopen from May 11, but restaurants, hotels, cafés and cinemas would remain shut for longer.
A trash bin burns in the street during clashes in Villeneuve-la-Garenne, in the northern suburbs of Paris, early on Tuesday. Tension with the police initially flared after a motorcycle accident involving a police cruiser on Saturday. (Geoffroy Van der Hasselt/AFP/Getty Images)
Italy will announce before the end of this week its plans for the gradual reopening from lockdown, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said on Tuesday.
The lockdown, which closed most Italian businesses and prevented people from leaving their homes for all but essential needs, has been in place since March 9, putting a major strain on the eurozone’s third-largest economy.
“I wish I could say: let’s reopen everything. Immediately. We start tomorrow morning…. But such a decision would be irresponsible. It would make the contagion curve go up in an uncontrolled way and would nullify all the efforts we have made so far,” Conte wrote in a Facebook post.
Germany’s Oktoberfest has been cancelled because of the coronavirus crisis, the southern state of Bavaria said on Tuesday. Around six million partygoers gather every year in Munich for the two-week-long festivities, held in packed tents with long wooden tables and oompah bands.
A teacher cleans and disinfects chairs and tables at the the Phoenix Gymnasium secondary school in Dortmund, western Germany, on Tuesday. Students preparing for the Abitur high-school graduation exams taking place in May are allowed to return to school from Thursday. (Ina Fassbender/AFP/Getty Images)
Britainis marking Queen Elizabeth II’s 94th birthday with silence Tuesday, foregoing the usual gun salutes and ringing of bells. With thousands dead amid the outbreak, the monarch decided that the celebratory display of military firepower would not be appropriate.
Meantime, the British Parliament went back to work Tuesday — mostly virtually. A few dozen legislators sat, well-spaced, in the House of Commons, and agreed on arrangements for lawmakers to ask questions from home using videoconferencing program Zoom beamed onto screens erected around the wood-panelled chamber. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab will continue to stand in for Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is still recovering from a bout of COVID-19.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo has banned people in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country from returning to their hometowns to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, the end of the dawn-to-sunset fasting during Ramadan. The announcement came amid warnings from health experts that Indonesia could face an explosion of coronavirus cases that could infect more than a million people after Ramadan unless the government imposes stricter measures.
Migrant workers wearing protective face masks collect catered food distributed by volunteers on Monday in Singapore. Migrant workers in the construction industry have been served with a 14-day stay home notice starting from April 20 in order to curb the transmission of the coronavirus at work sites. (Ore Huiyiung/Getty Images)
A northwestern province on the front line of China’s coronavirus battle reported its first cases in nearly three weeks on Tuesday, all Chinese nationals returning from overseas, as imported infections started to level off elsewhere.
At the same time, with over 2.5 million coronavirus cases reported worldwide, China is warning its citizens against travelling abroad. The consular department of China’s foreign ministry said that Chinese citizens should fully assess the “serious” risk of getting infected and not being able to return.
Singapore said on Tuesday it had preliminary confirmation of 1,111 new coronavirus cases, taking the city-state’s total infections to 9,125. The health ministry said most of the cases were migrant workers living in dormitories, a group that accounts for more than three-quarters of the city-state’s total infections.
