In Canada, a $5B budget to battle COVID
‘Texas is OPEN 100%,’ governor declares as mask mandate ends
DALLAS — Now that Texas’ mask mandate is ending, florist Lucy Alanis is reconsidering a rare treat she allowed herself in Dallas during the coronavirus pandemic: the occasional meal at a restaurant.
“I guess I’m a little scared,” said Alanis, 27.
The impact of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott repealing many of the state’s COVID-19 restrictions — tweeting “Texas is OPEN 100%” — began taking
shape Wednesday as businesses shed rules, city leaders plotted new safeguards and the state’s five million schoolchildren largely remained under orders to keep wearing masks for now.
But what daily life in Texas will look like come next week remains unsettled following one of the country’s most dramatic rollbacks, in particular the requirement to wear masks, which health experts say is among the most effective ways to curb the spread of the virus.
U.S. President Joe Biden also reacted to America’s secondlargest state winding down virus restrictions for nearly 30 million people, calling it “Neanderthal thinking.”
The mask mandate, which has been in place since July, and occupancy limits on restaurants and retail stores end March 10. Already, some stores announced they still won’t allow maskless customers, while social media users began tracking evolving polices on crowdsourced spreadsheets.
Shopping at Target? Masks are still required. Going to Texas’ largest grocery chain, H-E-B? Face coverings are encouraged but no longer mandated.
It’s yet another test for businesses that have struggled to strike a balance between safety and survival over the past year.
Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said his officers will continue wearing masks. He blasted Abbott over the repeal and worries about more aggressive encounters like one in December, when a customer confronted over a mask at a Houston bar smashed a glass over an employee’s head. “We’ll can see conflict coming, sadly,” Acevedo said. “And I think that a lot of this is going to be self-inflicted.”
Abbott said “personal vigilance” among Texans remained essential but that mandates were no longer needed, emphasizing the increasing availability of vaccines. On Wednesday, Texas health officials announced that teachers and child care workers were now eligible to be vaccinated.
The virus has killed more than 43,000 people in Texas, behind only California and New York. Like most of the country, new cases and hospitalizations statewide have fallen rapidly in recent weeks from record levels in January. But the toll still remains significant, including nearly 300 newly reported deaths Wednesday.
Still, federal health officials warn that the pandemic is far from over and that states should not let their guard down. Even one of Abbott’s own pandemic advisers disagreed with the move.
“I don’t think this is the right time.” said Dr. Mark McClellan, former head of the Food and Drug Administration, who also told The Associated Press in an email that he was not consulted before the repeals were announced.
State education officials on Wednesday gave local school boards the ability to set their own rules. Immediately after Abbott made his announcement Tuesday, the tiny Rogers school district about 130 kilometres north of Austin, said its 850 students would no longer need to wear masks or undergo temperature checks.
But by Wednesday morning, Superintendent Joe Craig backpedaled, saying he needed to explain the ramifications to parents.
Under the district’s current protocols, if everyone is wearing a mask, a positive test doesn’t trigger an automatic quarantine of everyone in the same classroom.
“If we go to a no mask thing, that part of it changes,” Craig said. Most parents would probably not want masks, he said, “but they’re missing a piece of information they’re not considering.”
OTTAWA — The Public Health Agency of Canada expects to spend up to $5 billion on vaccines and other COVID-19 treatments.
Federal budget documents show $5.3 billion was approved in December for COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, including the purchase of doses, and research and development. Last month, $5 billion of that was shifted from the current fiscal year into 2021-22, the next fiscal year that starts April 1.
The Public Health Agency of Canada told the Canadian Press this is to “ensure continuity of funding to match the timing for payments as vaccines are delivered.”
Only 6.5 million of the more than 240 million COVID-19 vaccine doses Canada is guaranteed to buy will be delivered before the end of March.
The price Canada is paying for vaccines has been shrouded in mystery, as contracts with suppliers are covered by confidentiality clauses that prohibit the federal government from saying how much it is spending on each dose.
Procurement Minister Anita Anand said in September that Canada had allocated $1 billion for vaccines after signing deals with five companies for 154 million guaranteed doses, as well as options to add another 108 million after more was known about how the vaccines worked. Another $220 million was allocated to buy up to 15 million doses from COVAX, the international vaccine-sharing program.
Soon after, Canada added 20 million doses from OxfordAstraZeneca and another 20 million from Medicago, which is the sole Canadian company in the mix. Neither was included in the original $1 billion.
Canada has also since doubled its order from PfizerBioNTech to 40 million doses, bumped its Moderna order from 20 million doses to 44 million, and purchased another two million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine produced at the Serum Institute of India.
The federal public health agency has not said specifically how much of the $5 billion is going to vaccines versus other COVID-19 pharmaceuticals.
The first 500,000 vaccine doses from India arrived in Canada Wednesday morning. Canada has also received more than two million doses from Pfizer-BioNTech and about 630,000 doses from Moderna.
No other vaccines have been approved. Dr. Supriya Sharma, the chief medical adviser at Health Canada, said she anticipates Johnson and Johnson’s vaccine will be authorized by the middle of March.
Some information on the cost per dose has been released or leaked in both the United States and Europe. The U.S. is believed to be paying, adjusted to Canadian dollars, $40 a dose to Moderna, $25 to Pfizer-BioNTech, $4 or $5 to Oxford-AstraZeneca, $12 to Johnson and Johnson and $20 to Novavax.
Europe’s prices, inadvertently leaked by a Belgian politician on Twitter, included, in Canadian dollars, $3 a dose for Oxford-AstraZeneca’s vaccine, $13 for Johnson and Johnson’s, $18 for Pfizer’s, and $27 for Moderna’s.