National News

The highly transmissible Omicron variant is forcing mathematicians to rework the models that have helped shaped Canada's understanding of COVID-19, as well as the country's response to the pandemic.

Everything from who gets tested to who's most likely to contract the virus has changed with the latest wave of the pandemic, and that's posing distinct challenges for those who model its impact, says Caroline Colijn, an associate professor of mathematics at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia.

Health Canada should be ready to make an authorization decision about Pfizer's Paxlovid antiviral treatment for COVID-19 in a week to 10 days, chief medical adviser Dr. Supriya Sharma said Thursday.

But it's still unclear when shipments will start or how much Canada will get at first as supply issues for the American-made drug have made it incredibly hard to get even in the United States, where it was authorized before Christmas.

It has been a day filled with confusion for many Canadian truck drivers after reports last night indicated that the federal government changed it's mind on the vaccination mandate which is set to come into effect on Saturday, January 15, 2022.

The federal government has issued a statement in response to the inaccurate information that reached the internet and airwaves last night.

The federal government says the vaccine mandate for truckers crossing into Canada from the United States will come into effect this Saturday as planned, despite a previous statement from the Canada Border Services Agency that said Canadian truck drivers would be exempt.

A new report suggests Canada is not doing enough to adapt to and prevent the effects of climate change and is lacking the critical data it needs to do so.

"I mean, 2021 has really now been a wake-up call that these are no longer sort of one-off anomalies, but this is sort of new patterns," said Scott Vaughan, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, and chair of a climate adaptation expert panel that produced the report.

Update below: 

The federal government says the vaccine mandate for truckers crossing into Canada from the United States will come into effect this Saturday as planned, despite a previous statement from the Canada Border Services Agency that said Canadian truck drivers would be exempt.

A record store in Rome got an unexpected visitor Tuesday evening: Pope Francis in his cassock.

A man who is spreading happiness across Canada through his cool cultural dancing videos is overjoyed by the response of his cross-county neighbours.

The fast-paced cultural dance that originated on farmers' fields called Bhangra sticks out against Gurdeep Pandher's snowy Yukon background, but that is exactly the point. He dances to spread happiness, but also to inspire cross-cultural relationships, including by dancing with people such as an Indigenous chief and Celtic dancers.

Radiologists are warning that Canadian hospitals are in serious need of more equipment and staff to deal with medical imaging backlogs that the country was already facing before the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Dr. Gilles Soulez, president of the Canadian Association of Radiologists, said wait times for medical imaging that is critical for diagnoses was already more than the recommended one month when the pandemic began in March 2020. On average, he said, Canadians were waiting 50 to 82 days for a CT scan and 89 days for an MRI. 

The federal prison service says it is making several changes to help prisoners addicted to opioids, including getting them faster access to treatment by eliminating a waiting list that is hundreds of people long.

The Correctional Service of Canada says the changes were made in response to the opioid crisis sweeping Canada and to resolve a human rights complaint launched in 2018.

The complaint filed by Prisoners' Legal Services in B.C. claimed they were being denied treatment for their addictions or had to wait months to get therapy.