| | | | Good evening, here is the latest on the coronavirus outbreak for Monday, Nov. 30, 2020.
Go to cbc.ca/news for complete coverage. | | | | |  | B.C. health minister orders review of allegations of misspending during pandemic. | | | | | Churches, worshippers run up against COVID-19 restrictions. | | | | | The Fifth Estate investigates conditions that led to migrant farm worker outbreaks. | | | | | | |  | Prime Minister Boris Johnson examines a vial of the AstraZeneca/Oxford University COVID-19 candidate vaccine, known as AZD1222, at the Wrexham, Wales, manufacturing facility of pharmaceutical and biotechnology company Wockhardt. (Paul Ellis/WPA/Getty Images) | | | | | | Calgary-Upper NE, one of 132 local geographic areas (LGAs) that Alberta uses in reporting COVID-19 cases, and home to some 115,000 people, has been in the unenviable position of being the top spot in the province for coronavirus cases for several weeks now.
The number of active COVID-19 cases in Calgary last week surpassed 1,000, a number not seen anywhere else at any time in the province, which has recently been logging the most cases per capita in Canada. As of Sunday, there were 1,194 cases in the LGA, a doubling in less than a month's time.
According to community leaders, many of the residents work in public-facing, low-income jobs with no opportunity to work from home, while they're more likely to reside in multi-generational households in densely populated neighbourhoods than other parts of the city. Language barriers may also blunt the impact of public health messaging.
Anila Lee Yuen, CEO of the Centre for Newcomers in the northeast, says housing density and a reliance on transit and car sharing also need to be taken into account.
"You have a more densely packed population, so even when people are adhering to the best possible safety protocols, there could still be issues," she said.
The northeast of the city is where many newcomers and refugees settle in the days and weeks after arriving in Canada. Some residents told CBC News they are worried about being stigmatized, criticized and blamed for the rising number of cases from those in other parts of the city and province. | | | | | |  | Researchers are trying to use wastewater as a way to test for outbreaks of COVID-19 before people show symptoms, and universities are getting federal funding to focus testing on long-term care homes. Watch the full video here. | | | IN BRIEF | | | | | | British Columbia's health minister has ordered an immediate review of alleged misspending by the Provincial Health Services Authority (PHSA) during the COVID-19 crisis, which comes after CBC News brought forward concerns about expenditures raised by multiple sources with intimate knowledge of operations within the PHSA.
The PHSA, which co-ordinates services with B.C.'s regional health authorities and sets provincewide health standards, maintains a pledge on its website to be "cost-effective." But whistleblowers have raised a number of concerns, with the most costly mistake a purchase of unusable face masks in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The agency's new president personally sought a supplier in his home province of Quebec. Of $11.5 million paid to the supplier, almost $7 million worth of masks brought in from China were deemed "problematic" and unusable in the health sector. Sources say many did not meet the N95 North American standard, while other masks were deemed to be counterfeit.
The health authority says that since the botched order, the Ministry of Health has toughened ordering procedures, "ensuring due diligence is undertaken before a final purchase is made."
B.C. is hardly the only jurisdiction or government to receive useless or counterfeit goods on the global market amid hyper-demand during the pandemic, a list that includes the federal government. But insiders CBC News spoke to are also raising concerns about the money spent by PHSA for catered lunches and Vancouver office renovations.
At least one insider wants B.C.'s auditor general to look into the spending decisions, calling them "irresponsible."
"These are public funds, and our health-care providers and their patients should be a priority — especially during a pandemic," said the insider, who CBC News has agreed not to name because of their fear of professional repercussions. | Read more details from insiders in B.C. | | | | | | | | | | Communal worship and religious gatherings have been among the public activities the pandemic has upended. The Pope had to refrain from delivering mass in St. Peter's Square in Rome, while several U.S. guidelines for churches have been challenged all the way to that country's Supreme Court.
Here in Canada, there were incidents involving religious gatherings this weekend in British Columbia and Manitoba.
A church in Langley, B.C., just east of Vancouver, has been fined $2,300 for contravening a recent provincial health order announced by Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry that prohibits in-person, faith-related gatherings, which was aimed at limiting the spread of COVID-19. On Sunday, Langley RCMP said they asked congregants at the small church in a strip mall to disperse. When they didn't, police issued the fine.
At least two congregants CBC News spoke to said they doubted the validity of Henry's orders and questioned why liquor stores should remain open as an essential service but not churches.
"There is a movement afoot to ensure that more churches also start to defy Bonnie Henry's orders," one churchgoer said.
Meanwhile, two other churches in B.C.'s Fraser Valley also said they're continuing to offer in-person services despite the health order.
In southern Manitoba on Sunday, more than 100 cars sat parked along a rural highway, while several RCMP vehicles blocked the entrance to the parking lot for the Church of God's planned drive-in service. At one point, a congregation member stood between a van blocking traffic and the tow truck the RCMP had called to remove the vehicle.
RCMP say they advised about 125 people at the service of the current public health orders and were given the option of entering the property and being fined or going home. One man told RCMP he wanted to continue on and was given a fine of nearly $1,300.
"Being alone at home and watching a virtual service does not replace worship," said Tobias Tissen, the church's minister. | | Read more about the scene in Manitoba | | | | | | | | | | Every year, tens of thousands come to Canada for up to eight months from places like Mexico and the Caribbean to plant, pick and pack $5 billion worth of produce, providing a labour lifeline for Canadian fruit and vegetable farms. Kristal Chopp, the mayor of Norfolk County in southwestern Ontario, calls them "essential to ensuring the continuity of our food supply chain."
But it's arduous work in an industry where "the rules are basically stacked against the farm workers," said Rod MacRae, a food policy researcher and professor at York University in Toronto. - WATCH Bitter Harvest on Monday at 9 p.m. on CBC-TV and CBC Gem
The pandemic has led to increased woes. According to research done by The Fifth Estate, migrant farm workers in Ontario contracted COVID-19 at a rate 10 times higher than all other people in the province.
"We are allowed out two to three hours every two weeks," said Ben, in his seventh season of coming to Canada to help provide for his extended family in Jamaica. "Only on our shopping days to get our food, that's the only time we can leave."
Some of those restrictions on movement implemented by agricultural companies were contrary to federal law, The Fifth Estate has learned.
"There might be 10 or 12 people in a bunkhouse — half of them are going to say, 'We want to go out,' and the other half are going to say, 'If you're going out, you're going to bring COVID back in,'" said Norfolk County activist Leanne Arnal, who has been selling clothes to workers for more than 10 years.
Activists and stakeholders say the pandemic should be providing the impetus for the various levels of government to address long-lingering issues in farm work, including adequate housing and protections for those workers who speak up to address working conditions.
"The clock is ticking for next season already," said Chopp. | Read more about the migrant worker situation. | | |  | Stay informed with the latest COVID-19 data. | | | | | THE SCIENCE | | | | | | | | While there's been a lot of focus in recent days on vaccines that could be available to some members of the public in a matter of weeks, Harvard School of Public Health epidemiologist Dr. Michael Mina tells CBC's Quirks & Quarks that the United States and Canada could benefit strongly by deploying at-home versions of rapid antigen tests in communities where the virus is currently out of control.
Antigen tests detect viral proteins rather than the genetic material that polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests detect.
The rapid tests can be simple to administer, requiring a nasal swab and a small container of testing material, and they can produce results in as little as fifteen minutes.
Mina and his colleagues utilized computer modelling to try out different testing scenarios using home versions of rapid antigen tests. By adjusting variables like frequency of testing and how often new cases of COVID-19 were being introduced, Mina could test how an outbreak would play out over time.
Mina said they found that if only half the population tested themselves twice a week — and even if 10 per cent of the tests failed — at-home rapid antigen testing could work to control the spread of the virus within weeks.
"If we're not doing frequent testing, then even the most sensitive tests in the world won't be able to stop transmission," he said.
The Canadian government has begun to distribute a version of an antigen test to provinces and territories, but it still needs to be administered by a qualified health-care practitioner. Health Canada has yet to approve any at-home rapid antigen tests.
Mina points to Slovakia as a real-world example of antigen tests helping to detect virus cases that otherwise wouldn't have been detected, with the Eastern European country recently seeing a significant drop in cases as a result. | | | AND FINALLY... | | | | | | | |  | Lyle Edwards, owner of the Calgary-based cold logistics company Frozen Solid, shows off a truck kept at about -20 C on the inside. (Falice Chin/CBC) | | | Think about what happens if your frozen dessert sits out, even for a short period of time, and is then refrozen. On top of potential food safety issues, it often tastes worse and may have ice crystals in it.
Just like some of the coronavirus vaccines currently in the trial phase, ice cream needs to stay in a cold chain until just before it's ready to be used or consumed. The catch with at least one coronavirus vaccine that could be approved for public use, from Pfizer, is that it needs to be kept even colder than your typical ice cream van.
Calgary-based Frozen Solid delivers items such as groceries and pet food. The company has a fleet of temperature-controlled trucks that function as freezers on wheels. It also has distribution centres or warehouses that can keep everything cold. Workers essentially dress like it's winter all year round.
"The cold chain, you can't miss a link in the system," said Lyle Edwards, owner of Frozen Solid.In addition to keeping a consistent temperature, it is expected there will be a limited supply of vaccines coming into Canada, and they may arrive gradually.
The design of a cold chain needs to take that into account, according to Hossein Abouee Mehrizi, an associate professor in the department of management sciences at the University of Waterloo.
"We need to have a really good demand estimation for each region," said Mehrizi. | Read more about cold supply chains | | | Share this newsletter | | or subscribe if this was
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