National News

There's hope that Health Canada's approval of Pfizer's antiviral COVID-19 treatment will help ease the strain on the country's health-care system, as hospitalizations continue their steady climb.

The pill uses a combination of two antiviral drugs to prevent the virus that causes COVID-19 from replicating once it has infected a patient, but health officials stress it is not a replacement for vaccinations.

Newly released documents show the Finance Department last year warned that the pace of price increases could gain speed, even as the Liberal government and central bank maintained that inflationary pressures were temporary.

In a briefing note to Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland from the spring, officials outlined "the case for runaway inflation" as part of a larger review of consumer prices.

Health Canada has approved Pfizer's antiviral treatment for COVID-19 and the drug maker says some of it has already been delivered for use.

The authorization posted to the Health Canada website Monday morning says the treatment can be used for adult patients with mild or moderate COVID-19 who are also at high risk of becoming more seriously ill.

The drug review team at Health Canada says the risk-benefit analysis was "favourable" for adults in this category.

Millions more Canadian students will head back to school today as officials across four provinces work to keep classrooms safe from COVID-19 and the threat of Omicron-driven staff shortages.

Students in Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba and Nova Scotia are returning to class after starting the New Year online because of record-high case counts. 

The provinces said the return to remote learning was intended to take pressure off the health-care system and give schools more time to improve safety measures.

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.