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Ontario reports 6,098 new COVID-19 cases and 39 new deaths over past 2 days - highest single-day case counts since Jan. 17
Ontario reported 3,009 new COVID-19 cases on Saturday and 3,089 cases on Friday, marking the two highest single-day case counts since Jan. 17.
Saturday's new cases include 954 in Toronto, 434 in Peel Region, 348 in York Region, 205 in Ottawa and 146 in Hamilton.
On Jan. 17, the province had reported 3,422 cases, marking the last time the daily case count topped 3,000.
Since Friday, the province's network of labs completed more than 59,100 tests, bringing the test positivity rate to 5 per cent. Friday's case count comes after more than 62,300 tests were completed.
The seven-day rolling average now stands at 2,552 daily cases, an increase from 1,944 the same time last week.
Ontario's health ministry did not update the daily case count on Friday because Good Friday is a statutory holiday.
At 12:01 a.m. on Saturday, the province entered a month-long "emergency brake" shutdown, which means personal care services, gyms and indoor dining must shut down, but schools and most retailers can stay open with specific capacity limits in place.
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Why restricting AstraZeneca vaccines in Canada means balancing 'vaccine risk vs. disease risk' - 3rd wave hitting younger Canadians harder, but AstraZeneca vaccine only for 55+ due to rare blood clot risk
Canada's decision to suspend the use of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine in Canadians under 55 during a surging third wave and a slow vaccination rollout is a calculated risk.
The National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) updated its guidance to provinces and territories against the use of the vaccine for younger Canadians on Monday, following reports of rare but potentially fatal blood clots in Europe connected to the shot.
Health Canada says the benefits of the vaccine to protect against COVID-19 still outweigh the potential risks, with more than 300,000 doses of the shot administered and no cases of the serious clotting condition, known as vaccine-induced prothrombotic immune thrombocytopenia (VIPIT), in Canada.
But the decision to restrict the use of one of four approved vaccines at a time when COVID-19 levels are rising again in Canada's hardest hit provinces is a tough pill to swallow for some.
"It can be a very powerful tool when we're at this stage of the pandemic where we're talking about, in hotspots at least, the system getting to a point of potential collapse," said Dr. Susy Hota, an infectious disease specialist at the University Health Network and an associate professor of medicine at the University of Toronto.
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Seven UK blood clot deaths after AstraZeneca vaccine
Seven people have died from unusual blood clots after getting the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in the UK, the medicines regulator has confirmed to the BBC.
In total, 30 people out of 18 million vaccinated by 24 March had these clots.
It is still not clear if they are just a coincidence or a genuine side effect of the vaccine.
Countries including Germany, France, the Netherlands and Canada to restrict the vaccine's use only to older people.
The data released by the MHRA on Friday showed 22 cases of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) which is a type of blood clot in the brain.
These were accompanied by low levels of platelets, which help form blood clots, in the body. The MHRA also found other clotting problems alongside low platelet levels in eight people.
Now the MHRA has confirmed, in an email to the BBC, that "sadly seven have died".
Two issues are raising suspicions. The first is the unusual nature of the clots which, including low levels of platelets and rare antibodies in the blood that have been linked to other clotting disorders.
"This raises the possibility that the vaccine could be a causal factor in these rare and unusual cases of CVST, though we don't know this yet, so more research is urgently needed," said Prof David Werring, from the UCL Institute of Neurology.
The other issue is the difference between the Oxford-AstraZeneca and the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines.
There have been two cases of CVSTs after Pfizer in the UK, out of more than 10 million vaccinated, but these did not have the low platelet levels.
However, there remains uncertainty around how common these clots normally are. Estimates range from two cases per million people every year to nearly 16 in every million in normal times and the coronavirus has been linked to abnormal clotting, which may be making these clots more common.
Germany has reported 31 CVSTs and nine deaths out of the 2.7 million people vaccinated there, with most cases in young or middle-aged women.
Similar data on who has been affected in the UK has not been published in the UK, but a wider mix of people are thought to have been affected.
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Canada surpasses 1 million confirmed COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic
Canada has recorded its one-millionth case of COVID-19 according to tracking by CBC News, just over 14 months after the first case was reported.
The milestone — reached Saturday afternoon after B.C. reported 2,090 cases from the past two days — comes as many parts of the country enter a third wave, and variants of the illness cause increased concern. Nationally, the confirmed case total is now 1,001,651; the death toll stood at 23,050, while 921,465 cases were resolved and 57,136 were active.
Canada reported its first presumptive case of COVID-19 on Jan. 25, 2020, a man who had returned to Toronto from Wuhan, China, where the virus was first detected. He ultimately survived.
By the time the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic on March 11, 2020, Canada had recorded about 140 cases and one death, according to CBC News tracking. The country hit the 100,000-case mark about 99 days after logging its first case.
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