Nearly 5.4 million Canadians getting emergency federal aid
WASHINGTON — New York’s coronavirus death toll topped 10,000 Monday as a lack of fresh hot spots in the U.S. and beyond yielded a ray of optimism about how some places might reopen.
The brunt of the disease has been felt most heavily in New York, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom, but grim projections of a virus that would spread with ferocity to other corners of America and the world had not yet materialized after a month.
Officials around the world worried that halting quarantine and social-distancing measures could easily undo the hardearned progress that those steps have achieved in slowing the spread.
Still, there were signs countries were looking in that direction. Spain permitted some workers to return to their jobs, and a hard-hit region of Italy loosened its lockdown. Governors on both coasts of the U.S. announced they would join forces to come up with a co-ordinated reopening at some point, setting the stage for a conflict with President Donald Trump, who asserted he is the ultimate decision-maker for determining how and when to reopen.
Storms rip into South leaving dozens dead
CHATSWORTH, Ga. — Storms that killed at least 30 people in the Southeast, piling fresh misery atop a pandemic, spread across the eastern United States on Monday, leaving more than 1 million homes and businesses without power amid floods and mudslides.
In Alabama, people seeking shelter from tornadoes huddled in community shelters, protective masks covering their faces to guard against the new coronavirus. A twister demolished a Mississippi home save for a concrete room where a married couple and their children survived, but 11 others died in the state.
About 85 miles from Atlanta in the mountains of north Georgia, Emma and Charles “Peewee” Pritchett laid still in their bed praying as a suspected twister splintered the rest of their home.
“I said, ‘If we’re gonna die I’m going to be beside him,”’ the woman said Monday.
Both survived without injuries.
LONDON — His skin pale and his eyes hooded from a week in the hospital with the coronavirus, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson paid tribute to two nurses who never left his bedside, a time when his life “could have gone either way.”
Jenny McGee of New Zealand and Luis Pitarma of Portugal, he said, embodied the sacrifice of National Health Service staff on the front lines of the pandemic, which has killed 11,329 people in Britain.
“The reason, in the end, my body did start to get enough oxygen was because, for every second of the night, they were watching and they were thinking and they were caring and making the interventions I needed,” he told the nation Sunday, “so that is also how I know, that across this country, 24 hours a day, for every second, for every hour, there are hundreds of thousands of NHS staff who are acting with the same care and thought and precision as Jenny and Luis.”
Johnson’s statement could mean the NHS has a powerful new advocate as it seeks to reverse a decade of austerity that has left Britain’s doctors and nurses struggling to treat the flood of coronavirus patients with inadequate supplies of protective gear. At least 19 NHS workers have died in the outbreak.
WASHINGTON — Scientists are dusting off some decades-old vaccines against other germs to see if they could provide stopgap protection against COVID-19.
Vaccines are designed to target a specific disease. But vaccines made using live strains of bacteria or viruses seem to boost the immune system’s first line of defence, a more general way to guard against germs. And history books show that sometimes translates into at least some cross-protection against other, completely different bugs.
There’s no evidence yet the approach would rev up the immune system enough to matter against the new coronavirus. But given that a new vaccine is expected to take 12 to 18 months, some researchers say it’s time to put this approach to a faster test, starting with a tuberculosis vaccine.
“This is still a hypothesis,” said Dr. Mihai Netea of Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands. But if it works, “it could be a very important tool to bridge this dangerous period until we have on the market a proper, specific vaccine.”
WASHINGTON — Sen. Bernie Sanders endorsed Joe Biden’s presidential campaign on Monday, encouraging his progressive supporters to rally behind the presumptive Democratic nominee in an urgent bid to defeat Donald Trump.
“I am asking all Americans, I’m asking every Democrat, I’m asking every independent, I’m asking a lot of Republicans, to come together in this campaign to support your candidacy, which I endorse,” the Vermont senator said.
Sanders ended his campaign, which was centred around progressive policies such as universal health care.
There were signs some progressives weren’t ready to follow Sanders, and Trump’s campaign was eager tie Biden closely to Sanders, whose identity as a democratic socialist is objectionable to Republicans and some Democrats.
OTTAWA — Nearly 5.4 million Canadians are receiving emergency federal aid, with hundreds of thousands more claims waiting to be processed, the federal government said Monday, providing another snapshot of the economic fallout from COVID-19.
Federal figures showed that by Monday morning, 5.38 million people were getting payments through the Canada Emergency Response Benefit.
That includes some two million people who were previously approved for employment insurance benefits, but moved over to the new $2,000-a-month benefit that opened for applications one week ago.
During the first week it was available, there were just under 3.5 million claims, including nearly 172,000 over the weekend.
Figures provided by Employment Minister Carla Qualtrough’s office show the government has received about six million claims for financial help since the crisis began about one month ago, when non-essential economic activity was paused due to health concerns.
The Liberals are likely to roll out more help soon to fill gaps in existing programs, such as by broadening the scope of the CERB to capture workers currently being left out.
On Wednesday, the Bank of Canada will make a rate announcement, issue an economic outlook, and could co-ordinate any new actions with the Finance Department, said Scotiabank deputy chief economist Brett House.
“The bank’s work isn’t quite done here,” House said.
“If they’re going to roll out additional measures, it’s the perfect time to do so.”
Since the start of March, the central bank has slashed its key interest rate to 0.25 per cent from 1.75 per cent, including two unscheduled cuts. It has also started a massive bond purchase program that goes beyond what the central bank did during the global financial crisis just over a decade ago.
At the last of those unscheduled cuts, the bank indicated the target overnight rate was as low it could be.
Last week, A C.D. Howe Institute panel of economists concluded there was little reason for the bank to move the key rate “appreciably over the next year” and instead should focus on keeping credit markets functioning.
Panellist Thorsten Koeppl, a professor in the economics department at Queen’s University, said he expects the rate to go to zero because the central bank is paying interest at the target rate instead of on a half-point band around the rate — removing any hurdle to putting the rate lower.
Coupled with the rate announcement will be a monetary policy report that the bank says will provide its analysis of COVID-19’s economic impact, and any foreseeable rebound to the closures of businesses and loss of jobs.
More federal help for companies is to arrive next week in the form of an interest-free loan program to provide eligible small businesses and non-profits up to $40,000, with the promise of $10,000 being forgiven if paid by the end of 2022.
Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre asked the government to increase the loan limit as an interim measure to help companies cover payroll costs while they await payments from a new wage subsidy program.
When the government is able to pay the subsidy to eligible businesses in a few weeks, Poilievre proposed companies take the first tranche to pay off the increased loans provided by banks and credit unions.
“The government is stretched, so why not let our frontline lenders deliver the money now and take that strain off the governmental system,” he said during a press conference.
The 75 per cent wage subsidy program, approved by Parliament on Saturday, will pay up to $847 per week, per employee for up to 12 weeks. The subsidy is retroactive to March 15 and will be available to companies with a 15 per cent revenue drop in March, or 30 per cent decline in April or May.
As part of an agreement to get swift approval of the $73 billion subsidy, the Liberals promised to cover gaps in its various aid programs.
Also on Monday, a handful of Conservative business critics called on the Liberals to develop a plan to help the nation’s restaurant, hospitality and tourism sectors.
Many of those businesses were either among the first to close due to public health concerns related to COVID-19, or have seen dramatic declines as consumer spending drops.
Among the ideas proposed are temporarily allowing owner-operators to qualify for the federal wage subsidy program as well as refunding a year’s worth of GST remittances to small businesses.
A report last week by the parliamentary budget officer estimated that refunding federal sales tax to small businesses would cost Ottawa’s coffers about $12.9 billion
British PM’s praise could
boost the NHS cause
Could old vaccines for
other germs help?
Sanders backs Biden as ex-rivals join forces