Parents of infant who died in wrong-way crash on Ontario's Hwy. 401 were in same vehicle
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
China is easing some of the world's most stringent anti-virus controls and authorities say new variants are weaker. But they have yet to say when they might end a "zero-COVID" strategy that confines millions of people to their homes and set off protests and demands for President Xi Jinping to resign.
On Monday, commuters in Beijing and at least 16 other cities were allowed to board buses and subways without a virus test in the previous 48 hours for the first time in months. Industrial centers including Guangzhou near Hong Kong have reopened markets and businesses and lifted most curbs on movement while keeping restrictions on neighborhoods with infections.
The government announced plans last week to vaccinate millions of people in their 70s and 80s, a condition for ending "zero-COVID" restrictions that keep most visitors out of China and have disrupted manufacturing and global trade.
That spurred hopes for a quick end to "zero COVID." But health experts and economists warn it will be mid-2023 and possibly 2024 before vaccination rates are high enough and hospitals are prepared to handle a possible rash of infections.
"China is not ready for a fast reopening yet," Morgan Stanley economists said in a report Monday. "We expect lingering containment measures. Restrictions could still tighten dynamically in lower-tier cities should hospitalizations surge."
The changes follow protests demanding an end to "zero COVID" but are in line with Communist Party promises earlier to reduce disruption by easing quarantine and other restrictions. The changes have been highly publicized in a possible effort to mollify public anger, but there is no indication whether any might have been made in response to protests in Shanghai and other cities.
China is the only major country still trying to stamp out transmission while the United States and others relax restrictions and try to live with the virus that has killed at least 6.6 million people and infected almost 650 million.
The protests began Nov. 25 after at least 10 people died in a fire in an apartment building in Urumqi in the northwest. Authorities denied suggestions firefighters or victims were blocked by locked doors or other anti-virus controls. But the disaster became a focus for public frustration.
Ahead of the protests, the Communist Party promised to make "zero COVID" less costly and disruptive but said it was sticking to the overall containment strategy.
The party earlier announced updates to the strategy to make it more focused. Authorities began suspending access to buildings or neighbourhoods with an infection instead of whole cities. But a spike in cases starting in October prompted areas across China to close schools and confine families to cramped apartments for weeks at a time.
Authorities say they are "further optimizing" controls and warn the country needs to stay alert.
China faces "new situations and tasks" due to the "weakening of the pathogenicity" of the latest Omicron variant, a deputy premier in charge of the anti-virus campaign, Sun Chunlan, said last week. She said China has "effective diagnosis and treatment" and has vaccinated more than 90% of its people.
The government of Shanghai, the country's financial capital, announced visitors to most sites will require only a negative virus test in the past week, instead of the previous two days. Schools, hospitals and bars still will require a test within the past 48 hours.
Despite the changes, Beijing and other cities are telling some residents to stay home or enforcing other restrictions on neighbourhoods with infections.
Travellers at the Chinese capital's train stations and three airports are required to show a negative virus test within the previous 48 hours. Elsewhere, Guangzhou and other cities said areas deemed at high-risk for infection still face additional curbs.
A negative virus test within the past 72 hours still is required to enter public buildings in vast metropolis of Chongqing in the southwest, a hotspot in the latest infection spike. Dining in restaurants in some parts of Beijing still is prohibited.
A newspaper reported last week that some Beijing residents who have mild or asymptomatic COVID-19 cases would be allowed for the first time to isolate themselves at home instead of going to one of China's sprawling quarantine centers. The government has yet to confirm that.
Forecasters say the struggling economy, already under pressure from weak demand for Chinese exports and a government crackdown on debt in the real estate industry, might be contracting this quarter.
Regulators have responded by freeing up more money for lending and are trying to encourage private investment in infrastructure projects. They have eased some financial controls on real estate developers to reverse a slump in one of China's biggest industries.
"Policymakers are focusing their efforts on spurring growth," Eurasia Group analysts said in a report. "However, even if China's transition away from a strict zero-COVID policy is more decisive and accelerated, meeting public health milestones like increasing elderly vaccination will take months."
On Monday, the government reported 30,014 new cases, including 25,696 without symptoms. That was down from last week's daily peak above 40,000 but still close to record daily highs for China.
Xi's government has held up "zero COVID" as proof of the superiority of China's system compared with the United States and Western countries. China's official death toll stands at 5,235 since the start of the pandemic versus a U.S. count of 1.1 million.
China also has suffered a possible rise in fatalities among people with cancer, heart disease and other conditions who struggled to get care while hospitals focused on treating virus cases. Data on those deaths haven't been reported.
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
A spike in impaired driving-related collisions has caused Ontario’s provincial police to begin enforcing mandatory alcohol screening (MAS) at all traffic stops in the Greater Toronto Area -- a move one civil rights group says is ‘not acceptable.’
William Nylander scored twice and Joseph Woll made 22 saves as the Toronto Maple Leafs downed the Boston Bruins 2-1 on Thursday to force Game 7 in their first-round series.
Jurors in the hush money trial of Donald Trump heard a recording Thursday of him discussing with his then-lawyer and personal fixer a plan to purchase the silence of a Playboy model who has said she had an affair with the former president.
Staff at a small southern Alberta office supply store were shocked to find someone had broken into the business last week, but they were even more confused when they discovered the culprit was a bear.
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a scuba dive boat captain to four years in custody and three years supervised release for criminal negligence after 34 people died in a fire aboard the vessel.
Fake text message and email campaigns trying to get money and information out of unsuspecting Canadian taxpayers have started circulating, just months after the federal government rebranded the carbon tax rebate the Canada Carbon Rebate.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.
The lawyer for a residential school survivor leading a proposed class-action defamation lawsuit against the Catholic Church over residential schools says the court action is a last resort.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.