Canada: Every Province Sets a New Record for Covid-19
New Delhi: A country with a low population – Canada reporting a noticeably hike in covid-19 and omicron cases. Nearly every Canadian province shattered its daily COVID-19 case count record Wednesday, as the Omicron variant sweeps across the country and brings a level of infection not seen before.
According to a media report, The number of active cases in Canada at this stage is nearly 210,000 – which is an almost ten-fold increase from mid-November. The seven-day average has reached a record 25,000 infections per day — nearly 200 percent higher than the peak of the third wave last April — with a new high of 32,180 cases reported Wednesday alone.
Health officials across the country have pinned the rapid acceleration of cases on the Omicron variant – which Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam said Wednesday is ‘quickly’ displacing Delta as the dominant variant in the country.
Among those new cases were new record tallies posted by British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador. The other provinces are hovering just below their own records, while the territories are also beginning to see increases in cases.
The surge has prompted new restrictions in several provinces, which have also begun to address how the new wave will impact the return to school.
Education Minister Jennifer Whiteside said that the delay will allow public health officials to assess the impact of Omicron and give school staff time to implement enhanced safety measures, those measures include the cancellation of extracurricular sports tournaments and plans to control crowding at schools, such as through staggered recess and break times.
“We have to ensure we have the foundations in place to keep our schools safely open,” she said.
In Newfoundland and Labrador, health officials announced that schools would shift to remote learning after the holiday break. The announcement came one day after Nova Scotia extended the holiday break for students in that province by one week in order to slow the spread of Omicron.
British Columbia said Wednesday it would bring back students in January in a phased approach, with staff and students whose parents are health workers, as well as those who need extra support, returning to class on January 3 or 4. All other students will go back to school on January 10.
(_Vinayak Barot)
