COVID-19 Live Updates: News on coronavirus in Calgary for April 22

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With news on COVID-19 happening rapidly, we’ve created this page to bring you our latest stories and information on the outbreak in and around Calgary.

What’s happening now

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My COVID Story: How have you been impacted by coronavirus?

Postmedia is looking to speak with people who may have been impacted by COVID-19 here in Alberta.  Have you undergone a travel-related quarantine? Have you received your vaccine, and if so did you feel any side effects? Have you changed your life for the better because of the pandemic? Send us an email at reply@calgaryherald.com to tell us your experience, or send us a message via this form.

Read our ongoing coverage of personal stories arising from the pandemic.

Waste not, want not: Montana tribe provides COVID-19 vaccinations at border crossing

A long line of cars was backed up at the Carway border crossing in southern Alberta this week as First Nations members and others took advantage of free COVID-19 vaccinations from the Blackfeet Tribe in Montana.

James McNeely, the public information officer for the tribe, said that despite a slow start in getting vaccines for the reserve’s 10,000 residents, 98 per cent of those eligible have been vaccinated.

Many members of the reservation, 150 kilometres south of Lethbridge, have relatives in Canada and, with a lot of extra vaccine, they decided to see if they could help, said McNeely.

McNeely said the health administrator at the tribal clinic in Browning said she had a lot of shots that were going to expire if they weren’t used.

Read more.

The latest on COVID-19 from across Canada

More than 10 million Canadians have now received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. The milestone was passed this morning.

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Nunavut is reporting three new cases of COVID-19 today, bringing the territory’s active case count to 36. There are 34 cases in Iqaluit and two in Kinngait, which have been linked to the outbreak in Iqaluit. Both communities are under strict lockdowns, with all schools, non-essential businesses and workplaces closed.

Newfoundland and Labrador is reporting three new cases of COVID-19. The first case involves a man in his 60s in the eastern health region and is related to travel inside Canada. The other two are in the western health region — a woman between 20 and 39 years old and a male under 20 — and both are close contacts of previous cases.

New Brunswick is reporting 19 new cases of COVID-19 today. Eleven of new cases are in the Edmundston region, part of which has been under lockdown for the last 12 days.

Nova Scotia is reporting 38 new cases of COVID-19 today and now has a total of 111 active infections.Thirty-three cases have been identified in the Halifax area, three in the eastern zone, and one each in the northern and western zones. Nineteen of the Halifax cases are close contacts of previously reported cases, 10 are under investigation and four are related to foreign and domestic travel.

Quebec is reporting 1,248 new COVID-19 cases and seven more deaths attributed to the novel coronavirus, including two in the past 24 hours.

Ontario is reporting 3,682 new cases of COVID-19 and 40 more deaths linked to the virus.

Manitoba is reporting 261 new cases of COVID-19.

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Survey of Canadian’s mental health finds people at new lows

A survey by Morneau Shepell has found that prolonged pandemic-related isolation continues to take its toll on Canadians’ mental health.

The monthly Mental Health Index reached a new low, with an 11.2 point drop from the pre-2020 benchmark of 75.

The survey found that managers within companies are experiencing greater levels of stress than non-managers. At the same time, 65 per cent of employees want the flexibility to work from home after the pandemic ends.

Although the idea of working from home remains popular, 26 per cent of employees say they don’t expect their employer will support remote work post-pandemic.

Hinshaw to speak at 3:30 p.m.

Alberta’s chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw will speak with reporters at her usual time of 3:30 p.m.

Watch this page for a livestream of the press conference.

‘We got it wrong’: Tearful Ford says Ontario moved too fast on restrictions

Ontario Premier Doug Ford offered a tearful apology on Thursday for the harsh restrictions his government imposed a week ago before it made an about-face turn in the face of widespread opposition.

“We got it wrong,” he said. “We made a mistake.”

The premier said the government moved too quickly in limiting residents’ mobility.

“The buck stops with me,” he added. “I know that many people continue to be unhappy right now, and I understand and I accept the responsibility for that.”

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No more walk-in spots available today at Telus Convention Centre

For the third day in a row, walk-in spots for the AstraZeneca vaccine at the Telus Convention Centre in Calgary have filled before noon. AHS is encouraging people to make appointments.

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EU starts legal case against AstraZeneca over vaccine delays, says Ireland

The European Commission has initiated a legal case against AstraZeneca over its “complete failure” to meet delivery and contractual agreements for its vaccine, Ireland’s Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said on Thursday.

“With regard to AstraZeneca, a legal case has been initiated by the (European) Commission and earlier this week I have joined Ireland as one of the parties to that legal case, specifically around AstraZeneca’s complete failure to meet its delivery and contractual agreements for April, May and June,” he told parliament.

— Reuters

WHL Hitmen cleared of COVID concerns to return to action

The Calgary Hitmen have got the green light to get back into game-play.

Two weeks after a case of COVID-19 on the team shut down activities, the Western Hockey League franchise is ready to rejoin the schedule — and it will do so Friday afternoon against the visiting Lethbridge Hurricanes at Seven Chiefs Sportsplex.

The Hitmen shut down activities on April 8 after they received one positive test for COVID-19 within the team cohort. They completed their 14-day isolation period, and after further testing for coronavirus — which yielded no positive results — they were given clearance by health officials.

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Wednesday

Hundreds line up for AstraZeneca in Calgary as Alberta clocks almost 1,700 new cases of COVID-19

Calgary’s large-scale immunization clinic reached capacity for the second day in a row as hundreds lined up to receive the AstraZeneca vaccine by walk-in or appointment.

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Alberta Health Services (AHS) said they were no longer accepting walk-in clients at the downtown site, located in the TELUS Convention Centre, just hours after the doors opened on Wednesday. The surge in AstraZeneca vaccine uptake came after Alberta expanded eligibility from people aged 55 and over to 40-plus.

The province also reported 1,699 new cases Wednesday, including 1,332 variants of concern. The active case count now sits at 18,873 — about 59 per cent of which are COVID-19 variants.

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Wednesday

Paid leave for COVID-19 vaccines now the law in Alberta

Alberta workers have been given up to three hours paid leave to get vaccinated against COVID-19, one day after the idea was suggested by the opposition in the legislature.

In a rare move, MLAs sped up the approval process by waiving many of the bureaucratic amendments that apply to tabling other pieces of legislation. Within slightly more than 30 minutes the bill had passed through all three required readings Wednesday night.

Amendments to the employment standards code now provide a COVID-19 vaccine leave and make it illegal for an employer to fire or discipline an employee who takes time off to be vaccinated.

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Wednesday

Calgary business owner who made PPE is now in ICU with COVID-19

April 14 was supposed to be the day Adrian Bussoli, 68, received his first dose of COVID-19 vaccine. Instead, it was the day he took a test for the virus.

By the next day, the Calgary small business owner and active volunteer was in the ICU in a medically induced coma and breathing on a ventilator.

In the past year Bussoli’s company, Alberta Garment Manufacturing, had pivoted from oil and gas to manufacturing masks and gowns for private business and the military.

“He’s been a builder,” said friend Martin Buting. “He’s one of those guys with a small business who really gave back to society.”

Read more.

Wednesday

B.C. police say they take ‘exception’ to conducting roadblocks limiting travel

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British Columbia’s solicitor general says the government will release details of what is considered essential travel this week as the province looks at using roadblocks to limit the spread of COVID-19.

Mike Farnworth described the checkpoints as a type of “counterattack,” often used to find drunk drivers, but this time meant to discourage recreational travel outside of a person’s health authority.

A “full and comprehensive” list on what is considered essential travel will be released laster this week, Farnworth said at a news conference Wednesday.

His comments come as the National Police Federation released a statement saying it has “grave concerns” about police taking part in enforcing a COVID-19 ban on non-essential travel.

Read more.

Wednesday

Ontario seeing growing numbers of pregnant women critically ill with COVID-19

Ottawa high-risk obstetrician and researcher Dr. Mark Walker admits he is terrified by the number of pregnant women ending up in intensive care units across the province with COVID-19 — including in Ottawa.

“There have never been this many pregnant women in ICU in the history of our country, or our province. This is unprecedented.”

In Ottawa, the number was less than six (Walker cannot be more specific for privacy reasons) as of earlier this week, but in some intensive care units in Toronto, pregnant women now represent half, or more, of the critically ill COVID-19 patients, a large percentage of them on ventilators. The situation has reached critical levels in recent weeks.

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The women Walker is seeing in intensive care are the sickest pregnant women he has ever treated during his 20-year career as an obstetrician, he says.

“It is heartbreaking and terrifying,” he said. “These are young, otherwise healthy women.”

Read more.

Wednesday

ICU pressures mount in Ontario as COVID fells younger people

Amid mounting pressures on critical care in hospitals and concerns about new variants, COVID-19 is striking a growing number of younger people, often with deadly results.

A recent surge in hospital and ICU admissions has been particularly acute in Ontario, where experts have warned the system was fast reaching a breaking point. One ICU doctor in Toronto reported the rate of fatalities among younger Canadians had increased dramatically in recent months.

“Younger daycare workers, ride-share drivers, factory workers — and their families — are dying,” Dr. Michael Warner, with Michael Garron Hospital, tweeted.

Read more.

Wednesday

Alberta Health shifts some AstraZeneca doses away from local pharmacies to large vaccination sites

Alberta has shifted some doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine originally intended for local pharmacies to rapid flow clinics, causing some appointments to be cancelled.

On Tuesday, the province lowered the age requirement to get the AstraZeneca vaccine to anyone 40 or older after uptake with an older age group was slow. Tens of thousands of Albertans booked timeslots and attended walk-in clinics. The uptake of people registering on the first day was more than the entire previous week.

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Postmedia heard from multiple Albertans on Wednesday who said their pharmacy appointments had been cancelled due to a lack of supply.

Alberta Health spokesperson Tom McMillan said the department decided to redirect some AstraZeneca doses that were supposed to go to pharmacies to the rapid flow clinics to help vaccinate Albertans as quickly as possible.

Read more.

Wednesday

Alberta vaccine makers urge province to get going on domestic supply plan

Alberta-based pharmaceutical companies with COVID-19 vaccines in the works are urging the provincial government to move quickly to support the development of a domestic vaccine industry.

The Alberta government — which put out a call for proposals in March for projects that would bolster long-term vaccine capacity in the province — has since received 17 submissions from companies both inside and outside Alberta, proposing to do everything from early-stage research and development to manufacturing and final production. All of the interested companies were asked to explain how they would support the health of Albertans during COVID-19 and any future variants, as well as how they would support the long-term growth of the pharmaceutical sector in Alberta and local job creation.

Though the government has not yet committed a dollar amount to the project, it has already contracted an outside agency to conduct a due diligence review of the proposals. The plan is to “move quickly” after that to choose specific proposals to fund.

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Wednesday

Alberta student says she and others are dreading return to online learning

A 17-year-old in Edmonton says she and many of her friends are dreading a return to online learning for the next two weeks because of COVID-19.

Amara Mogos says going back and forth between online learning and regular school has been draining for her and many of her classmates, but she understands the need to do it.

Mogos is one of thousands of junior high and high school students in the city who will return to online learning Thursday.

Read more.

Wednesday

Mass vaccination site for Cargill workers in High River postponed

Alberta has postponed the opening of an on-site vaccination clinic meant to offer workers at the Cargill meat-packing plant in High River their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine.

The mass vaccination clinic was scheduled to run Thursday to Saturday as part of Phase 2C of Alberta’s immunization strategy since the worksite has been a source of rapid transmission over the last year. Eighty per cent of the more than 2,000 employees at the plant had already signed the paperwork to get their shot before Cargill was informed about the postponement Tuesday evening.

Alberta Health said this is due to a delay in a shipment of the Moderna vaccine that the province was counting on for the clinic, which will open as soon as possible.

Read more.

Wednesday

Argentina COVID-19 deaths hit 60,000 in pandemic’s ‘worst moment’

Argentina is going through its “worst moment” of the COVID-19 pandemic, the health minister said on Wednesday, as deaths from the virus hit 60,000 amid a sharp second wave that has forced the country to re-impose some lockdown measures.

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Health Minister Carla Vizzotti warned that the South American country’s healthcare system was at risk, especially in the metropolitan area around the capital Buenos Aires, which had forced the government to restrict movement and suspend indoor activities.

Read more.

Wednesday

‘They’re heroes’: How COVID-19 ‘vaccine hunters’ help Canadians find appointments

He’s a software engineer by day and vaccine hunter by night.

Josh Kalpin has made it his goal to get COVID-19 vaccine shots into people’s arms through an increasingly popular Twitter account called “Vaccine Hunters Canada” — one of many tools being created to help people find available appointments and increase vaccine uptake across the country.

“It’s our duty as Canadians to help those that are most at-risk and vulnerable,” Kalpin said. “It’s something tangible every single Canadian can do and we’re just here to facilitate that.”

Read more.

Wednesday

Biden says he spoke to Trudeau about helping Canada get more vaccines

President Joe Biden says the United States plans to provide Canada with more help in procuring COVID-19 vaccines.

Biden says he spoke today with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the subject. He says the White House is looking at what to do with vaccines that aren’t currently in use in the U.S. That’s likely a reference to the Oxford-AstraZeneca shot, which has been approved for use by Health Canada but not by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

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The U.S. has already provided Canada with about 1.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, and gave 2.5 million doses to Mexico.

Read more.

Also see: U.S. will soon hit 200 million goal on vaccine shots: official

Wednesday

Quebec confirms Canada’s first case of ‘double mutant’ variant from India

Quebec has identified its first case of the B.1.617 variant of COVID-19, which originated in India and is believed to be fuelling the pandemic surge in that country.

The case was identified in a patient in the Haute-Mauricie region of Quebec, north of Trois-Rivières, officials with Quebec’s public health laboratory confirmed Wednesday. It is believed to be the first case of this variant identified in Canada.

Read more.

Wednesday

CFL delays start of 2021 season to Aug. 5

The CFL has delayed the start to the 2021 season.

Commissioner Randy Ambrosie made the announcement on Wednesday morning, ending weeks of speculation regarding if and when the 2021 season would start.

Ambrosie revealed in a media statement that a 14-game regular season is “targeted” to kick off on Aug. 5. The 2021 Grey Cup game, originally slated for Nov. 21 in Hamilton, has been moved to Dec. 12. Training camps are to open in mid-July.

Read more.

COVID-19 hospitalizations on the rise in Alberta