Coronavirus: What’s happening in Canada and around the world Friday

The latest:

British Columbia’s provincial health officer is now allowing up to 10 people to meet outdoors after nearly four months of restrictions that barred in-person gatherings between people from different households.

Dr. Bonnie Henry said Thursday restrictions on indoor gatherings and rules for restaurants, bars, retail stores and other venues remain in place.

“This means your children can have a playdate with their friends over the March break, but with their same group of friends,” she said.

“You can meet friends outside and have a coffee, have a chat, have a connection, have a picnic in a park with your grandparents.”

It’s still important to practise physical distancing outside, she added.

“We can spend time with a maximum of 10 people, the same people, outside, but smaller continues to be better.”

While the COVID-19 infection curve is trending down on Vancouver Island and in the Interior and Northern health regions, said Henry, the illness is still circulating in communities, particularly in the Lower Mainland.

The province’s seven-day rolling average number of cases has increased in recent weeks, she said, though hospitalizations have levelled off and the number of deaths being linked to the illness has decreased significantly.

Henry presented modelling data on Thursday showing the number of contacts people have right now are 50 to 60 per cent of what’s normal.

“In the past, when we know we can get it down to 40, 45, 50 per cent, we can bend that curve back down,” she told a news briefing.

B.C. has not seen a rapid increase in cases of COVID-19 variants of concern, Henry said, but a small cluster of the variant associated with Brazil was recently detected in the Vancouver Coastal Health region. Health officials have not seen additional transmission outside that group, she said.

There was a “slight increase” in B.C.’s mortality rate last year, Henry said, though B.C. has seen fewer “extra deaths” due to COVID-19 than other jurisdictions, including Ontario, Quebec and the United States.

The uptick is a result of both the novel coronavirus and the overdose crisis, said Henry, adding COVID-19 was the eighth most common cause of death in B.C. in 2020 and illicit drug toxicity was the fifth top cause.

“COVID-19 has had a profound impact on older people in our communities and the overdose deaths have had a profound effect on younger people.”

B.C. reported 569 new cases Thursday and three more deaths, pushing the death toll to 1,397. There are 4,912 active COVID-19 cases in the province, including 244 people who are hospitalized with the illness.

Thursday also marked one year since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic.

“I certainly recognize and acknowledge that we’ve all experienced losses this past year, some of them an accumulation of tiny losses of those joys, those things that we had in our lives. And for some people, it’s the tragic loss of a loved one, whether from COVID, or whether from other things in this uncertain time.”

-From The Canadian Press, last updated at 7 a.m. ET

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What’s happening across Canada

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As of early Friday morning, Canada had reported 899,762 cases of COVID-19, with 30,666 cases considered active. A CBC News tally of deaths stood at 22,371.

In Atlantic Canada, there were a total of three new cases of COVID-19 reported on Thursday — two in New Brunswick and one in Newfoundland and Labrador.  No new cases were reported in Nova Scotia or Prince Edward Island, where health officials are now allowing people between 18 and 29 who work in food service and delivery to schedule their vaccination.

In Quebec, health officials reported 738 new cases of COVID-19 and 15 additional deaths on Thursday. Hospitalizations ticked down to 563, with 111 COVID-19 patients in intensive care units. Premier François Legault on Thursday praised essential workers for their efforts and urged people to remember the lives lost in the pandemic — more than 10,500 in Quebec alone. 

“We lost grandmothers, grandfathers, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, friends, and today Quebec remembers these people that left us too soon,” he said at an event marking the one-year anniversary of the World Health Organization’s declaration of a global pandemic.

Ontario health officials, meanwhile, reported 1,092 new cases of COVID-19 and 10 additional deaths on Thursday. Hospitalizations stood at 680, with 277 people with COVID-19 in the province’s intensive care units.

A new dashboard put out by the province’s Science Advisory Table on Thursday tracks information about variants of concern in the province — including information about new cases linked back to variants of concern and the reproduction number.

In the Prairie provinces, Manitoba reported 91 new cases of COVID-19 and three additional deaths on Thursday. Saskatchewan, meanwhile, reported 165 new cases and no additional deaths. In neighbouring Alberta, health officials reported 364 new cases of COVID-19 and five additional deaths. Hospitalizations in Alberta stood at 259, with 38 COVID-19 patients in intensive care.

Across the North, there were no new cases reported in Nunavut, the Northwest Territories or Yukon. Nunavut Premier Joe Savikataaq said in a tweet that Thursday was the fourth day in a row for the territory having no new cases of COVID-19.

-From CBC News and The Canadian Press, last updated at 7 a.m. ET

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What’s happening around the world

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As of early Friday morning, more than 118.6 million people around the world had reported having COVID-19, according to a tracking tool maintained by the U.S.-based Johns Hopkins University. Of those, more than 67.1 million were listed as recovered. The global death toll stood at more than 2.6 million.

In Europe, Germany’s health minister said the country should prepare for “several very challenging weeks” amid a rise in coronavirus cases. Health Minister Jens Spahn told reporters in Berlin on Friday that “the situation remains tense,” as the country’s disease control centre reported 12,834 newly confirmed cases in the past day, and 252 new COVID-related deaths.

The head of the agency, Lothar Wieler, said Germany is “at the beginning of the third wave” of infections following surges in cases last spring and in the fall.

Spahn noted there has been a drop in serious illnesses and deaths among the elderly, as most people over 80 in Germany have now received a virus vaccine. He said Germany has managed to administer more than 200,000 first shots daily this week. As more supplies arrive, shots will be administered not just in special vaccine centres but, from mid-April, also in doctors’ practices, said Spahn.

In Africa, South Africa’s health minister has said the country’s rollout goals for vaccinations may need to be changed because of supply issues. The country had aimed to have 65 per cent of people vaccinated by the end of the year, the Mail & Guardian reported. The mass rollout effort is still set to begin in April, Dr. Zweli Mkhize said — though he did not offer a firm date.

Mozambique, meanwhile, expects to receive 1.7 million more doses of COVID-19 vaccines by May from various bilateral sources.

In the Asia-Pacific region, India has registered its worst single-day jump in coronavirus cases since late December with 23,285. The sharp spike is being attributed to the western state of Maharashtra.

India has so far reported more than 11.3 million cases, the world’s second-highest after the United States. Infections have been falling steadily since a peak in late September, but experts say increased public gatherings and laxity is leading to the latest surge.

The increase is being reported in six states, including Maharashtra where authorities have announced a weeklong lockdown in the densely populated Nagpur city next week. The vaccinations there will continue.

India is in its second phase of its COVID-19 inoculation campaign and plans to vaccine 300 million people by August. The vaccination drive that began in January is still running way below capacity.

More than 26 million people have gotten a shot, though only 4.72 million are fully vaccinated with both doses.

WATCH | COVID-19 cases rise in India amid religious festival and vaccine hesitancy:

Mayors have decided to reimpose a seven-hour night curfew in the Philippine capital region of more than 12 million people amid a spike in coronavirus infections, which forced dozens of villages to be placed back under police-enforced lockdowns.

Authorities would enforce the 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew for two weeks starting Monday in Metropolitan Manila, where most cases in a new surge of infections have been reported this week, said Benhur Abalos, who heads the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority.

The Philippines has reported the highest number of confirmed infections at more than 600,000 and more than 12,500 deaths among 24 pandemic-hit countries in the Western Pacific region, the World Health Organization said.

President Rodrigo Duterte said Thursday he did not know how he could considerably ease quarantine restrictions when cases continue to surge. He said he may be able to further reopen the economy when millions of Filipinos have been vaccinated. But the government’s vaccination campaign has faced supply problems and public reluctance.

“We cannot forever be in the strict protocols because we have to open the economy. People are hungry … they have to work, to eat, to survive,” Duterte said. “I am, I said, in a quandary of what to do.”

In the Americas, Chile’s President Sebastian Pinera has announced a raft of new measures aimed at helping middle class families stay afloat amid a new wave of coronavirus contagions that has sent swaths of the country back into lockdown.

Hospitals in Brazil’s main cities are reaching capacity, health officials warned, triggering tighter restrictions on Thursday in its most populous state.

In the Middle East, Iran remained the hardest-hit country, with more than 1.7 million recorded cases of the virus and a death toll of more than 61,000.

–From The Associated Press, Reuters and CBC News, last updated at 7:30 a.m. ET