'He's in our hearts': Family and friends still seek answers one year after Nathan Wise’s disappearance
It’s been a year since Nathan Wise went missing and his family is no closer to finding out what happened to him.
South Africa's COVID-19 vaccine rollout has been hit by further delays as it will have to discard at least 2 million Johnson & Johnson vaccines produced in the country.
The vaccines were found by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to be unsuitable for use due to possible contamination of their ingredients at a Baltimore plant. South Africa was expecting to use them to inoculate its health care workers and people aged 60 years and older.
This is the latest setback to South Africa's vaccine rollout which has so far given shots to just over 1 per cent of its 60 million people.
Early this year the country rejected about 1 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine it received from the Serum Institute of India after a small, preliminary study found that the vaccine offered minimal protection against mild to moderate cases of the COVID-19 variant that is dominant in South Africa. Those vaccines were sold to the African Union for distribution to other African countries.
To date, the country has given jabs to more than 1.7 million people, including nearly 480,000 health workers who were inoculated as part of a study trial of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
The production of the J&J vaccine at South Africa's Aspen Pharmacare manufacturing plant in the eastern city of Gqeberha, formerly known as Port Elizabeth, was eagerly awaited to give a much-needed boost to the country's vaccination drive. The factory has contracted with J&J to produce the vaccine using large batches of the basic ingredients supplied by Johnson & Johnson. The South African plant then blends those components and puts them in vials - a process knowns as "fill and finish."
The South African plant has the capacity to produce about 200 million doses annually of the J&J vaccine and had already manufactured 2 million. But they were produced using ingredients from the Baltimore plant and therefore must not be used, according to the ruling by the FDA and South Africa's health officials.
The South African Health Products Regulatory Authority issued a statement saying it had "reviewed the data provided by the FDA and has made a decision not to release vaccines produced using the drug substance batches that were not suitable."
South Africa will now only receive 300,000 doses of the J&J vaccine which have been cleared by the FDA, it said.
Aspen will begin production of new J&J vaccines using fresh, uncontaminated ingredients at its facility this week, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced this week.
South Africa has purchased and is expecting delivery of 30 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine and 31 million single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccines by early 2022. These deliveries are necessary for South Africa to achieve its goal of vaccinating 40 million people by February 2022.
South Africa is currently experiencing a new resurgence of the COVID-19 pandemic with an increased number of recorded infections. Its 7-day rolling average of daily new cases has more than doubled over the past two weeks from 5.69 new cases per 100,000 people on May 30 to 12.17 new cases per 100,000 people on June 13.
It recorded 7,657 new infections and 59 deaths in the last 24 hours, bringing to 57, 765 the number of people who have died from the virus.
South Africa has been the hardest hit by COVID-19 on the continent, with more than 1.7 million confirmed cases, representing nearly 40 per cent of the more than 5 million cases reported by Africa's 54 countries.
It’s been a year since Nathan Wise went missing and his family is no closer to finding out what happened to him.
Dozens of Ontarians are expressing frustration in the province’s health-care system after their family doctors either dropped them as patients or threatened to after they sought urgent care elsewhere.
An Ottawa pizzeria is being recognized as one of the top 20 deep-dish pizzas in the world.
Amazon's paid subscription service provides free delivery for online shopping across Canada except for remote locations, the company said in an email. While customers in Iqaluit qualify for the offer, all other communities in Nunavut are excluded.
The fire burning near Fort McMurray grew from 25 hectares to 5,500 hectares over the weekend.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin began a Cabinet shakeup on Sunday, proposing the replacement of Sergei Shoigu as defence minister as he begins his fifth term in office.
Police are searching for a male suspect after a man was “slashed in neck” on Sunday morning in downtown Toronto and died.
There were some scary moments for several people on a northern Ontario highway caught on video Thursday after a chain reaction following a truck fire.
Health Canada announced various product recalls this week, including electric adapters, armchairs, cannabis edibles and vehicle components.
English, history, entertainment, math and geography: high school trivia teams could be quizzed on any of it when they compete at the Reach for the Top Nationals in Ottawa in June.
An Ottawa pizzeria is being recognized as one of the top 20 deep-dish pizzas in the world.
A family of fifth generation farmers from Ituna, Sask. are trying to find answers after discovering several strange objects lying on their land.
A Listowel, Ont. man, drafted by the Hamilton Tigercats last week, is also getting looks from the NFL, despite only playing 27 games of football in his life.
The threat of zebra mussels has prompted the federal government to temporarily ban watercraft from a Manitoba lake popular with tourists.
A small Ajax dessert shop that recently received a glowing review from celebrity food critic Keith Lee is being forced to move after a zoning complaint was made following the social media influencer’s visit last month.
The Canada Science and Technology Museum is inviting visitors to explore their poop. A new exhibition opens at the Ottawa museum on Friday called, 'Oh Crap! Rethinking human waste.'
The Regina Police Service says it is the first in Saskatchewan and possibly Canada to implement new technology in its detention facility that will offer real-time monitoring of detainees’ vital health metrics.
Just as she had feared, a restaurant owner from eastern Quebec who visited Montreal had her SUV stolen, but says it was all thanks to the kindness of strangers on the internet — not the police — that she got it back.