The management team at Humber River Hospital’s mobile vaccine clinic, Ruben Rodriguez, administers the first dose of the Modern COVID-19 vaccine to an employee of the pharmaceutical company Apotex, as part of the vaccination campaign against coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, April 13, 2021. REUTERS / Carlos Osorio
The Canadian province of Ontario extended and extended the stay-at-home order on Friday and said police will be given new powers to stop and interrogate people leaving their homes, as expert advisers warned that new cases of COVID-19 will continue to fire, overwhelming hospitals.
Ontario also announced restrictions on non-essential travel from neighboring provinces starting Monday and said non-essential construction, including construction projects for shopping malls, hotels and office towers, will close from Saturday for deal with a fast third wave.
“The reality is that there are few options left,” said Prime Minister Doug Ford. “The hard truth is that all the public health measures we have left have a massive cost to people.”
New projections released Friday by a provincial advisory group showed new cases rising above 10,000 daily in June if “moderate” public health measures are maintained for six weeks and vaccination levels remain roughly flat. Ontario, home to 38% of the Canadian population, announced a record total of 4,812 cases on Friday.
Adalsteinn Brown, co-chair of the advisory panel, said the moderate scenario was tantamount to a home stay order announced last week. The number of patients in need of intensive care could reach 2,000 in May, up from 695 on Friday, according to the forecast.
The serious prediction came when Moderna (MRNA.O) said it would reduce its next delivery to Canada by almost half to 650,000 doses, and Canada announced an agreement to buy 8 million more doses of Pfizer vaccine. Read more
In recent weeks, Ontario has closed schools, restaurants, limited in-store shopping and canceled elective surgeries as rising revenues threatened to overwhelm hospitals.
HOSPITALS UNDER PRESSURE
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the Canadian government would help hit hard Toronto, the province’s capital and the country’s largest city.
“We will do whatever it takes to help,” Trudeau told reporters. “Additional medical providers are still being debated and we are ready to intensify them.”
Trudeau said Canada had agreed to buy an additional 8 million doses of Pfizer vaccine, including 4 million that will be delivered in May, nearly doubling Pfizer shipments this month. Federal officials had previously said that most Canadians should receive a first dose by the end of June.
In the far north of Toronto, Sunnybrook Hospital is preparing to open a mobile health unit, effectively a field hospital, for some patients with COVID as early as next week, a spokesman said in a statement electronic.
The city’s University Health Network (UHN) is setting up tents in two emergencies to increase space.
The number of patients with UHN with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, an artificial lung treatment that is sometimes used to keep the sickest patients with COVID alive, reached 23, including 20 with COVID. The hospital network had previously said it could treat up to 30 patients.
Separately Friday, Health Canada said it had received a request from Pfizer and BioNTech to expand the use of its vaccine to children 12 years of age and older, from the age of 16.
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