'A beautiful soul': Funeral held for baby boy killed in wrong-way crash on Highway 401
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
It's "only a matter of time" before cases of the new omicron COVID-19 variant are detected in Canada, according to the medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.
Dr. William Schaffner says travel bans, such as the one implemented by Canada against southern states in Africa, can help delay the spread of the new strain but that it will eventually make its way around the globe.
"By that time, it's hopeful that we'll learn a lot more about these variants that will help us cope," he told CTV News Channel on Friday. "Anything that can dampen down introductions, slow the spread of this new variant around the world is important."
Right now, what medical experts do know about the strain is that it features a high number of mutations to the virus's spike protein and it appears to transmit more easily than the original COVID-19.
Fortunately, however, current testing methods are sufficient to detect it, which makes screening for the virus more important for countries than before.
"No border is completely porous-free. These things can travel, and that's a problem," Omar Khan, professor of biomedical engineering and immunology at the University of Toronto, told CTV News Channel on Friday. "It was recently detected, that does not mean it recently emerged. So that's the concern."
Canada's chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam stated Friday there are no indications of omicron's presence within the country.
If the new strain were in fact here, Khan says, Canada's high vaccination rate should offer Canadians good levels of protection. We'll know more about how well the COVID-19 vaccines work against omicron in the coming weeks.
"We have to understand that the current vaccines we have available were developed for the original type of coronavirus,” he said. “We were extremely fortunate that it worked for Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta. Now, with omicron, time will tell if we will still have protection.
"It's a moving target. The vaccine stays the same and the virus is evolving. So that's the challenge."
But, in the meantime, while Canada and the rest of the world buys time to find a way to tackle the new variant by restricting borders, the price is being paid by those countries in the south of Africa where omicron was detected first, Schaffner says.
"Travel bans are things that are instinctive, you would think that they would keep the virus out, but they're very, very imperfect," he said. "They have the added unfortunate effect of penalizing, in effect, the countries that are so forward who have made the discovery and let everybody know about them."
The pandemic is a global event, Schaffner says, and finding ways to help developing nations will, in effect, help everyone.
"We, the countries of the world, have not yet figured out a way to make enough vaccine and get it distributed equitably in rapid fashion," he said.
"We in the developed world have two reasons for doing this. One is of course the simple humanitarian reason, we want to save as many lives as possible. But the other is those variants, they appear abroad, and then can come home to our countries. So, we have a self-interest in making sure that we end this pandemic around the world as quickly as possible."
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
There has been a "sophisticated" cybersecurity breach detected on B.C. government networks, Premier David Eby confirmed Wednesday evening.
Toronto police say a man was taken into custody outside Drake's Bridle Path mansion Wednesday afternoon after he tried to gain access to the residence.
U.S. President Joe Biden said for the first time Wednesday he would halt shipments of American weapons to Israel, which he acknowledged have been used to kill civilians in Gaza, if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders a major invasion of the city of Rafah.
Dakota Joshua had a goal and two assists and the Vancouver Canucks scored three third-period goals to claw out a 5-4 comeback victory over the Edmonton Oilers in Game 1 of their second-round playoff series Wednesday.
One of the Indian nationals accused of murdering British Columbia Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar says in a social media video that he received a Canadian study permit with the help of an Indian immigration consultancy.
Pfizer has agreed to settle more than 10,000 lawsuits about cancer risks related to the now discontinued heartburn drug Zantac, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the deal.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault is defending his comments about a new history museum after he was accused by a prominent First Nations group of trying to erase their history.
Independent U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had a parasite in his brain more than a decade ago, but has fully recovered, his campaign said, after the New York Times reported about the ailment.
The stakes have been set for a bet between Vancouver and Edmonton's mayors on who will win Round 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
A grieving mother is hosting a helmet drive in the hopes of protecting children on Manitoba First Nations from a similar tragedy that killed her daughter.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
A P.E.I. lighthouse and a New Brunswick river are being honoured in a Canada Post series.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.