delta-kids Why the delta variant is hitting kids hard in the U.S. and how we can prevent that in Canada "Right now, things are really bad in the southern and southeastern parts of the United States," said Dr. David Kimberlin, with the Children's Hospital of Alabama and a professor of pediatrics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. "We have more pediatric cases, more pediatric hospitalizations, more pediatric severe disease cases than we've ever had throughout this pandemic," he said. "What we're experiencing is much worse than it was even in the dark days of January and February … during the wintertime surge."

alberta Alberta extends COVID-19 public health measures, provides back-to-school guidance Hinshaw announced Friday that masking will not be required provincially in school settings, but she said school officials have the authority to put in local measures — such as physical distancing, cohorting and mandatory masking — if those decisions are right for them and their communities. Education Minister Adriana LaGrange said that at this stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, those measures are "best left" to local authorities to decide for themselves.