COVID-19 live updates: Pfizer says antiviral pill cuts risk of severe symptoms by 89%; About 15,000 surgeries cancelled in Alberta's fourth wave, 5 new cases Thursday

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Watch this page throughout the day for updates on COVID-19 in Edmonton

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COVID-19 news happens rapidly, we have created this file to keep you up-to-date on all the latest stories and information on the outbreak in and around Edmonton.

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What’s happening now


Share your COVID-19 stories

As Alberta grapples with a fourth wave of COVID-19 at the start of another school year, we’re looking to hear your stories on this evolving situation.

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  • Have you or a loved one had a surgery rescheduled or cancelled in recent weeks?
  • Are you someone who has decided to get vaccinated after previously being skeptical of the vaccines?
  • Have you changed your mind about sending your children back to school in person?
  • Have you enrolled your children in a private school due to COVID-19?
  • Are you a frontline health-care worker seeing new strains on the health system?
    Send us your stories via email at edm-feedback@postmedia.com

8:00 a.m.

Pfizer says antiviral pill cuts risk of severe COVID-19 by 89 per cent

Reuters

A trial of Pfizer Inc’s experimental antiviral pill for COVID-19 was stopped early after the drug was shown to cut by 89% the chances of hospitalization or death for adults at risk of developing severe disease, the company said on Friday.

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The results appear to surpass those seen with Merck & Co Inc’s pill, molnupiravir, which was shown last month to halve the likelihood of dying or being hospitalized for COVID-19 patients also at high risk of serious illness.

Full trial data is not yet available from either company.

Pfizer shares surged 13% to $49.47, while those of Merck fell 6% to $84.69.

Pfizer said it plans to submit interim trial results for its pill, which is given in combination with an older antiviral called ritonavir, to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as part of the emergency use application it opened in October.

The combination treatment, which will have the brand name Paxlovid, consists of three pills given twice daily.

The planned analysis of 1,219 patients in Pfizer’s study looked at hospitalizations or deaths among people diagnosed with mild to moderate COVID-19 with at least one risk factor for developing severe disease, such as obesity or older age.

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It found that 0.8% of those given Pfizer’s drug within three days of symptom onset were hospitalized and none had died by 28 days after treatment. That compared with a hospitalization rate of 7% for placebo patients. There were also seven deaths in the placebo group.

Rates were similar for patients treated within five days of symptoms – 1% of the treatment group was hospitalized, compared with 6.7% for the placebo group, which included 10 deaths.

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7:54 a.m.

‘Happy dances at the malls’: U.S. border communities eagerly await return of Canadians

Adrian Humphreys, National Post

Vicki Kultgen, postmaster for Whitlash, Montana. Even without the COVID border closure it is the least-travelled border crossing between Canada and the United.
Vicki Kultgen, postmaster for Whitlash, Montana. Even without the COVID border closure it is the least-travelled border crossing between Canada and the United. Photo by Vicki Kultgen

Vicki Kultgen, the postmaster in Whitlash, Mont., 10 minutes due south of the sleepiest border crossing between Canada and the United States , grew accustomed to Canadians popping across the border to collect mail from a postal box, as it’s closer than any post office in Alberta.

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Vicki Kultgen, the postmaster in Whitlash, Mont., 10 minutes due south of the sleepiest border crossing between Canada and the United States , grew accustomed to Canadians popping across the border to collect mail from a postal box, as it’s closer than any post office in Alberta.

Throughout 2019, the year before the pandemic , 1,149 people crossed into tiny Whitlash from tiny Aden, making it the least travelled of all U.S. border crossings. That traffic plummeted to just 238 people in 2020, because of COVID-19 border restrictions, a drop of almost 80 per cent.

“I’ve been holding onto packages for them for over a year now that they have ordered and been unable to come and get,” Kultgen said. “We are very much looking forward to the border re-opening because where we’re at, some of our closest neighbours are on the other side of the fence, so to speak.”

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Thursday

About 15,000 surgeries cancelled in Alberta’s fourth wave; 516 new cases Thursday

Lauren Boothby

About 15,000 surgeries were cancelled in Alberta’s fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic as surging infections overwhelmed the province’s health-care system late summer into the fall.

Health Minister Jason Copping announced this figure in the legislature Thursday, adding that 30,000 surgeries were cancelled in the three previous waves combined. Copping said the health system had largely caught up on the previous backlog in August when cases surged again.

“It is challenging dealing with COVID. But our system can respond to that,” he said. “It is incredibly unfortunate that we’ve had to cancel more surgeries to be able to deal with the fourth wave, but we are working on a plan not only to be able to get caught up at this point in time, but to be able to show Albertans how we can actually get caught up and then exceed moving forward.”

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Copping announced cancer surgeries were no longer being postponed at a news conference on Wednesday.

For weeks , the NDP has been demanding the government tell the public how many surgeries have been cancelled. In a news release Thursday, the NDP said the cancellations were caused by “the government’s failure to act during the onset of the fourth wave.”

NDP health critic David Shepherd, in the release, accused Copping of hiding the number of cancelled surgeries until the last day of the house’s session before the break, criticizing them for avoiding answering their questions.

“It is heartbreaking to think of 15,000 Albertans and their families and the stress they were forced to endure because of this government’s failure to act when it mattered most,” he said in the release.

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The NDP has been demanding the government have an all-party committee to “investigate the failure of the UCP government,” reads the release.

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Thursday

Deliberately coughing at someone is a criminal assault, Alberta judge rules in ‘unprecedented decision’

Tom Blackwell. National Post

Others in Canada have pleaded guilty to assault for exhaling at people during COVID. But neither the Crown nor defence could find any case law anywhere in the world where a judge ruled coughing as a crime. Peter J. Thompson/National Post
Others in Canada have pleaded guilty to assault for exhaling at people during COVID. But neither the Crown nor defence could find any case law anywhere in the world where a judge ruled coughing as a crime. Peter J. Thompson/National Post

Deliberately coughing at someone during the COVID-19 pandemic – even if nothing visible is emitted by the cougher – constitutes a criminal assault, an  Alberta court has ruled  in what lawyers say may be the world’s first such judicial pronouncement on the novel issue.

It’s already sparking debate about how far Canada’s criminal law should reach.

Judge Heather Lamoureux’s conclusion that “emitting a force consisting of lung-air molecules” qualifies as the use of force under the Criminal Code led her to convict a bar patron who removed his mask and coughed at a waitress.

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The incident occurred during a confrontation over the customer’s winnings from a video lottery terminal.

Lamoureux focused on whether the gesture fit into the Criminal Code’s definition of assault as an act where someone “applies force” without another person’s consent.

“Air pressure is a force at the molecular level in the same manner as physical force visible to the naked eye. This is basic science, uncontroverted, and not requiring any expert opinion,” wrote the judge. “Accordingly, when Mr. Pruden engaged in an intentional act of coughing, he was emitting a force consisting of lung air molecules into the atmosphere.”

Others in Canada have pleaded guilty to assault for exhaling at people during COVID. But neither the Crown nor defence could find any case law anywhere in the world where a judge actually ruled at trial on whether such an act qualified as a crime, said defence lawyer David Roper.

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“It is an unprecedented decision,” he said. “It has effectively taken a pandemic for the court to come to this decision.”

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Letter of the day

Edmonton’s Walterdale Bridge and the Rossdale power plant frame the downtown skyline on May 1, 2020.
Edmonton’s Walterdale Bridge and the Rossdale power plant frame the downtown skyline on May 1, 2020. Photo by Ian Kucerak /Postmedia

Threats of violence not tolerated

The people who left the noose and threats on UCP MLA Tracy Allard’s front lawn in Grande Prairie should be ashamed of themselves. We live in a democracy, and therefore we live with the results of free and fair elections even if we don’t like the results. Any member of the legislature should never have to fear for her safety because of her government’s policies.

If we are not happy with the job they are doing, we can vote them out at the next election. We can express our displeasure through a number of peaceful means, but it should never come to threats of violence to a member or her family. If the group in Grande Prairie is so concerned about violations to their rights because of COVID restrictions, then they should launch a civil suit against the government of Alberta, but threats of violence should never be tolerated.

Bruce Heringa, Edmonton

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Letters Welcome

We invite you to write letters to the editor. A maximum of 150 words is preferred. Letters must carry a first and last name, or two initials and a last name, and include an address and daytime telephone number. All letters are subject to editing. We don’t publish letters addressed to others or sent to other publications. Email: letters@edmontonjournal.com

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Thursday

More than 95 per cent of public servants are fully vaccinated by end of deadline

Ryan Tumilty, National Post

A nurse prepares a dose of the Comirnaty vaccine by Pfizer-BioNTech against the Covid-19 in a vaccination centre in Noumea, in the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia, on September 7, 2021.
A nurse prepares a dose of the Comirnaty vaccine by Pfizer-BioNTech against the Covid-19 in a vaccination centre in Noumea, in the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia, on September 7, 2021. Photo by Theo Rouby / AFP

More than 95 per cent of public servants are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 after a deadline for them to announce their status passed last week.

The government’s vaccine mandate required public servants to sign an attestation by last Friday indicating if they were vaccinated. Of the 268,000 people working in the core public service almost signed the attestation about their status.

Of those, 255,533, indicated they were vaccinated, 7,284 said they were partially vaccinated, 1,255 said they were unvaccinated and 3,150 are requesting an exemption from the policy for medical or religious reasons.

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As late as last week only 240,000 attestations had been submitted, but it appears thousands of public servants submitted their forms in the days before the deadline.

Mona Fortier, president of the Treasury Board, applauded the news and thanked public servants for rolling up their sleeves.

“The Government of Canada is our country’s largest employer. I would like to thank the more than a quarter of a million public servants across Canada and around the world who have demonstrated leadership in our national vaccination effort against COVID-19,” she said.

The unvaccinated public servants could be suspended without pay as early as Nov. 15.

The mandate covers people working in core government departments including the RCMP. Crown corporations and the military have either brought in similar policies or are expected to do so soon.

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Thursday

Europe could see 500,000 new COVID deaths by February, WHO says

Shari Kulha, National Post

An intensive care unit at a Kiev hospital treating COVID-19 patients. Ukraine has been hit with a huge rise in infections with the delta variant.
An intensive care unit at a Kiev hospital treating COVID-19 patients. Ukraine has been hit with a huge rise in infections with the delta variant. Photo by SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP via Getty Images

“Europe is back at the epicentre of the pandemic, where we were one year ago,” the World Health Organization’s head of Europe said Thursday.

The number of new COVID-19 cases per day has been rising for nearly six consecutive weeks, and the number of new deaths per day has been climbing for just over seven consecutive weeks, with about 250,000 cases and 3,600 deaths per day, according to official country data compiled by the AFP newswire.

The WHO’s European region spans 53 countries and territories and includes several nations in Central Asia, and has already seen 78 million cases. Over the past four weeks, new case numbers have grown by more than 55 per cent, prompting WHO Europe director Hans Kluge to allow that the “current pace of transmission … is of grave concern .”

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Kluge cited one “reliable projection” for the prediction that the current trajectory would mean “another half a million COVID-19 deaths” by Feb. 1, 2022.

Although one billion doses have been administered in Europe and central Asia, Kluge blamed insufficient vaccination coverage and the relaxation of public health and social measures for the latest increases.

“If we achieved 95 per cent universal mask use in Europe and central Asia,” he noted, “we could save up to 188,000 lives of the half million we may lose before February 2022.

“Preventive measures, when applied correctly and consistently,” he said, “allow us to go on with our lives, not the opposite. Preventive measures do not deprive people of their freedom, they ensure it.”

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Thursday

Britain becomes world’s first to approve Merck COVID-19 antiviral pill

Reuters

An experimental COVID-19 treatment pill called molnupiravir being developed by Merck & Co Inc and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics LP, is seen in this undated handout photo released by Merck & Co Inc and obtained by Reuters May 17, 2021.
An experimental COVID-19 treatment pill called molnupiravir being developed by Merck & Co Inc and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics LP, is seen in this undated handout photo released by Merck & Co Inc and obtained by Reuters May 17, 2021. Photo by Merck & Co Inc

Britain on Thursday became the first country in the world to approve a potentially game-changing COVID-19 antiviral pill jointly developed by Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, in a boost to the fight against the pandemic.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) recommended the drug, molnupiravir, be used as soon as possible following a positive COVID-19 test and within five days of the onset of symptoms.

This is the first oral antiviral treatment for COVID-19 to get approved, with the green light coming ahead of potential U.S. regulatory clearance. U.S. advisers will meet this month to vote on whether molnupiravir should be authorized.

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The drug, to be branded Lagevrio in Britain, has been closely watched since data last month showed it could halve the chances of dying or being hospitalized for those most at risk of developing severe COVID-19 when given early in the illness.

The British government and the country’s National Health Service will confirm how the treatment will be deployed to patients in due course.

Last month, Britain agreed a deal with Merck to secure 480,000 courses of molnupiravir.

In a separate statement, Merck said it was expecting to produce 10 million courses of the treatment by the end of this year, with at least 20 million set to be manufactured in 2022.

The U.S. based drugmaker’s shares were up 2.1 per cent at $90.54 before the market open.

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