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.
Chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam says she'll soon have advice to help fully vaccinated Canadians figure out what they can safely do, but it won't be a blanket list of dos and don'ts covering everyone, everywhere.
Instead, Canada is looking at a "risk assessment tool" that will guide Canadians to make a call on their own whether they are safe and comfortable to take off their masks and throw physical distancing to the wind.
"It's not a straight black and white, sort of everybody take off their masks, everybody just do whatever you want," she said at a news conference Tuesday. "We would like to enable people to take themselves through that kind of risk assessment while respecting local public health requirements."
At least 7.7 million Canadians -- one in five people -- have received both doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, and that group is growing by one million people every two or three days. By the end of July, Canada expects to have enough doses to fully vaccinate all Canadians over the age of 12.
The Centers for Disease Control in the United States issued general guidance for the fully vaccinated back in early March, when fewer than one in 10 Americans had all the required doses they needed. That included, for example, socializing indoors and maskless with other fully vaccinated people, and not having to quarantine or test after an exposure to COVID-19 as long as you didn't develop symptoms.
The CDC now says fully vaccinated Americans can travel without quarantining afterwards, though they do need a negative COVID-19 test before departing for the U.S.
Canada is moving to follow suit July 6, when citizens and permanent residents can return home without quarantining, as long as they are fully vaccinated and test negative both before and after arriving.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday he will announce within the next few weeks when that can be expanded to fully vaccinated foreigners.
But direct guidance on how individual Canadians can begin to interact with one another more normally remains elusive.
Canada has been reluctant to go there so far, preferring to focus on community levels of vaccination, but Tam said Tuesday it is time to start getting a bit more specific for individuals.
"I think this is a really good question, especially at this point in time that most Canadians will have access to the second dose," she said.
"We expect to undergo these discussions rapidly and provide further communication to Canadians."
The tool is likely to provide a list of questions about your vaccination status, and that of the people you want to gather with, whether it will be indoors or outdoors, and what the local infection rates are.
Dr. Nazeem Muhajarine, a professor of community health and epidemiology at the University of Saskatchewan, said a blanket statement on what all Canadians can do when double-dosed isn't realistic.
"I think it would be helpful to some extent but the thing is some of these messages have to be really nuanced," he said.
He said there is still much to be learned about how the vaccines prevent transmission, the variants of the virus add some elements of risk, and that for now, he wouldn't recommend people take off their masks indoors in public.
"We're not there yet," he said.
Canada's case counts are the lowest they have been in nine months, and hospitalizations and intensive care admissions have dropped below where they were last October and November respectively. Tam said she is thrilled at how Canada has done planking the curve since the third wave peaked in April.
And as vaccinations increase things are starting to loosen.
Alberta announced Monday it would be lifting almost all provincial restrictions on Canada Day, eliminating the province wide public mask mandate and opening the door for indoor parties, and limit-free outdoor celebrations.
Saskatchewan will follow on July 11.
Quebec is moving every region into the "green" status as of next week, allowing for larger indoor gatherings, and street parties. Premier Francois Legault also said as of Friday, fully vaccinated people can socialize with each other indoors without masks.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 22, 2021.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Montreal police are facing pressure to move in and dismantle a pro-Palestinian encampment on McGill University campus on Thursday, as a growing number of universities across this country grapple with the tough decision of how to handle the protests.
A pro-Palestinian activist group says its international co-ordinator, who was arrested in a Vancouver hate-crime investigation, was released with an order not to attend any protests for the next five months.
A Conservative MP is challenging claims by House of Commons administration that a China-backed hacking attempt did not impact any members of Parliament, because the attack was on his personal email.
Loblaw chairman Galen Weston and the company's new CEO are pushing back against critics who blame the grocery giant for soaring food prices, as a month-long boycott of the retailer gets underway.
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.