Canada’s daily COVID-19 case counts much higher than at peak of first wave

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Canada’s chief public health officer says the daily COVID-19 case counts are nearly 75 per cent higher than they were at the peak of the first wave of the pandemic last spring.

Dr. Theresa Tam says the average daily case counts in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia have increased between eight and 14 per cent over the previous week. She says as of Thursday evening, there have now been 858,217 COVID-19 cases in Canada, including 21,865 deaths, since the beginning of the pandemic.

Tam warns that COVID-19 variants can still emerge and those that spread more quickly can become predominant.

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Quebec is reporting 815 new COVID-19 infections and 11 more deaths attributed to the virus. Health officials say hospitalizations dropped by 13, to 620, and 119 people were in intensive care, a drop of three. Quebec has now vaccinated more than 400,500 people with a first dose of COVID-19 vaccine after administering 12,038 doses on Thursday.

Ontario’s ministry of health says there are 1,258 new cases of COVID-19 in the province. There were also 28 more deaths linked to the virus in Ontario since the last daily update.

Health officials in Nova Scotia are reporting 10 new cases, nine of which were identified in the health region that includes Halifax, and one is in the eastern region. Of the new cases, five are close contacts of previously reported cases, three are under investigation and two are related to travel outside Atlantic Canada.

Health Canada has approved the COVID-19 vaccine from AstraZeneca, the third to be given the green light for national use. Canada has pre-ordered 20 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which was co-developed by researchers at the University of Oxford. It will also receive up to 1.9 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine through the global vaccine-sharing initiative known as COVAX by the end of June.

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