Coronavirus Update: When Will the Federal Government Revoke Vaccine Mandates? It is complicated, says the Minister of Health

Good evening, here are the COVID-19 updates you need to know tonight.

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When will the federal government revoke vaccine mandates? It is complicated, says the Minister of Health
Canadian-farmed biopharmaceutical companies spar key technology in COVID vaccines
Schools use play as a tool to help students recover from pandemic learning loss

Due to changes in the prevalence of tests, the number of cases alone is no longer a reliable indicator of the spread of COVID-19. In future, we will only include the weekly death rates and admissions in the newsletter. Go to a snapshot of COVID-19 data in Canada coronavirus tracker.

For the last seven days there was 255 deaths announced, down 19 percent in the same period. At least 3,496 people are being treated in hospitals.

Canada’s inoculation rate is 15 among countries with a population of one million or more people.

Sources: Canada data collected from government websites, Johns Hopkins and COVID-19 Canada Open Data Working Group; international data are from Johns Hopkins University.

Corona explanations: Coronavirus in maps and charts • Vaccine dose tracking • Lockdown rules and reopening

Photo of the day

Local health workers in Beijing wear protective suits while riding a scooter near an area where authorities set up a pop-up test site for COVID-19 on March 21.Kevin Frayer / Getty Images

Coronavirus in Canada

Masks are no longer required in most Ontario public spaces from today, including schools, retail and other spaces. Hospitals, long-term care homes, public transport and some other areas will hold masks until the end of April, when the province aims to roll back all remaining public health rules. The province reports 551 people in the hospital with COVID-19 and 181 people in intensive care.
British Columbia extends eligibility for rapid tests. People in their 30s and older can now pick up packages of free COVID-19 tests at pharmacies across the province. As of Monday, there were 271 people admitted with COVID-19, of which 49 were in intensive care.
With the recent repeal of all COVID-19 health orders in New Brunswick, fully vaccinated foreign temps can now work on farms without having to be isolated for 14 days, as was the case last year. About 200 temporary foreign workers arrive each year to fill the labor-intensive jobs at New Brunswick farms – jobs that farmers are unable to fill locally.

What does it take for the federal government to revoke COVID-19 vaccine mandates? Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos says it is complicated.

Conservative and NDP members of the House of Commons Health Committee hammered the minister with questions about a timeline, benchmark or set of conditions that would trigger an end to vaccine requirements for travelers and federal employees.
Duclos said the decision will be based on everything from vaccination rate, hospital capacity and domestic and international epidemiology to the impact of long-term COVID, the economy and other social consequences.

Collection in class: After two years of pandemic disruption, where students learned in front of a computer instead of in class with their peers, teachers embrace the guided play-learning philosophy to help students recover.

AstraZeneca COVID-19 drug: AstraZeneca said its antibody-based cocktail for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 has been shown to retain neutralizing activity against Omicron coronavirus variants, including the highly contagious BA.2 subvariant, in an independent laboratory study.

Vaccine donations: Canada has not donated half of the vaccine doses it has already promised to make available from its own supplies, but International Development Minister Harjit Sajjan said it is not the availability of doses that gets in the way.

Coronavirus around the world

Coronavirus and business

A multilateral legal settlement is currently underway over key technology in COVID vaccines, and three Canadian companies are involved in the disputes.

A pile of recent legal applications put Arbutus BioPharma Corp. and Genevant Sciences GmbH, both of British Columbia’s Lower Mainland, v Moderna Inc. And on Friday, a Vancouver-based Pfizer Inc. partner named Acuitas Therapeutics Inc. a Manhattan lawsuit to avert a separate legal challenge that Arbutus and Genevant had threatened against Pfizer.

Also today: A growing list of Calgary startups has leveraged capital outside during the pandemic, which has also transformed the traditional oil and gas center into one of Canada’s most promising technology hubs. The latest is Reach Ltd., a Calgary company that makes it easier for e-commerce companies to sell globally.

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Sources: Canada data collected from government websites, Johns Hopkins University and COVID-19 Canada Open Data Working Group; international data is from Johns Hopkins.

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