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5:32 a.m. COVID-19 cases continue to roll into the two Toronto-area hospitals where Eram Chhogala works as a trauma nurse. The numbers have dwindled to a stream instead of a wave, but each is a reminder of what the disease has done and could possibly still do.
“Previously, we had high numbers and waves where people came in heavy bottlenecks, and I’m just wondering if it’s going to be the same thing again,” Chhogala said in a phone interview this week. “You know, it’s the wonder of, ‘Is this going to happen again?’”
With mask mandates and other COVID-19 health restrictions lifting, many Canadians are finally able to envision a return to normal life. But, as they face burnout, staff shortages and daunting procedural backlogs, some health workers say it isn’t so easy to move on.
Read more from The Canadian Press.
5:20 a.m. On Sunday, Andrea Rama, a 36-year-old Cambridge letter carrier and mother of two, shook hands with her pastor.
It was the first time since COVID-19 began restricting social contact to prevent transmission of the disease, that Rama can remember shaking hands with anyone. The emotion she felt took her by surprise.
Handshakes are especially meaningful now, she says, as we edge uncertainly into more normal routines, mingling with others after two years spent staying apart.
Read more from the Star’s Francine Kopun.
5:10 a.m. WestJet Airlines Ltd. is preparing for an “immediate and dramatic” uptick in demand in the wake of the government of Canada’s decision to remove pre-entry COVID-19 testing requirements for vaccinated travellers.
Ottawa announced Thursday that as of April 1, travellers arriving in Canada by air, land or water from any country no longer have to provide a negative COVID-19 test result to gain entry, as long as they’ve had at least two doses of an accepted vaccine.
The move comes after months of lobbying by the Canadian travel industry, which had argued that the requirement to seek out and pay for a rapid antigen test before boarding a flight home was an unnecessary barrier to family and business travel.
Read more from The Canadian Press.
5:05 a.m. The Ontario government has doubled down on lifting mask mandates in schools and rejected overtures by publicly funded school boards that want to maintain face coverings for a while longer — a practice some private schools intend to continue.
Some school boards, including Toronto’s public and Catholic boards, asked for more time in lifting COVID-19 restrictions, rather than having to follow the province in ending mandatory masking in schools and most public spaces beginning Monday.
On Thursday, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health sent a letter to those boards, confirming they are expected to make masks optional when students and staff return after March break.
Read more from the Star
5 a.m. As Ontario gets rid of masking requirements for most indoor settings on Monday, European countries that have already dropped public health restrictions are offering a glimpse of how the province may fare in the next several weeks, say doctors and scientists.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, several nations in western Europe with comparable vaccination rates to Ontario are experiencing rising daily case counts as society returns to some semblance of pre-pandemic normalcy, especially with the arrival of the more transmissible BA.2 subvariant of Omicron.
It’s not unreasonable, then, to assume that Ontario will also see an uptick in daily cases as we drop our public health measures, combined with the spread of BA.2 and an influx of March break travellers returning to Canada, experts say.
Read more from the Star’s May Warren and Kenyon Wallace.
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