The latest news on COVID-19 developments in Canada

The latest news on COVID-19 developments in Canada (all times Eastern):

6:20 p.m.

Alberta is reporting 1,592 new COVID-19 cases, with 1,132 of them being variants of concern.

The province’s chief medical health officer, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, says in a tweet that such variants now make up 60.9 per cent of the province’s active caseload.

The province also reported five new virus-related deaths.

Hinshaw says there are 584 people with COVID-19 in hospital, including 129 in intensive care.

She says the province’s test positivity rate stands at nine per cent.

—

4:15 p.m.

New Brunswick health officials say another person in the province has died from COVID-19.

Officials say the person was in their 70s and lived in the Edmundston region.

Theirs is the province’s 35th COVID-related death.

Public health also reported eight new COVID-19 diagnoses in the province, bringing the total active caseload to 136.

—

3:45 p.m.

Saskatchewan is reporting 286 new COVID-19 cases and two new deaths.

Both of the people who died were in their 70s and were in the Regina zone.

The province says there are 186 people with COVID-19 in hospital, with 51 of those in intensive care.

—

2:15 p.m.

Manitoba health officials are reporting 276 new COVID-19 cases and three new deaths.

Two of the deaths were in the Winnipeg health region, and include a man in his 40s and a woman in her 60s.

The other person who died was in his 80s, and the province’s daily pandemic update says the death was linked to an outbreak at the Russell Health Centre in the Prairie Mountain health region.

Manitoba is reporting a five-day test-positivity rate of 6.8 per cent provincially and 7.2 per cent in Winnipeg.

There are now 140 people in hospital with COVID-19 in Manitoba, with 34 of them in intensive care.

—

2:10 p.m.

Newfoundland and Labrador public health officials are reporting three new cases of COVID-19.

Officials say they’ve traced all three infections to previously identified cases or to travel within Canada.

There are now 23 active reported cases of COVID-19 across the province and one person is in hospital with the disease.

—

1:55 p.m.

Nunavut’s chief public health officer says there are now COVID-19 cases in Rankin Inlet that arrived in the community by plane on Friday. 

Dr. Michael Patterson says in a news release that there are two cases linked to an outbreak in the territory’s capital, Iqaluit, and that they arrived on Canadian North Flight 239 from Iqaluit to Rankin Inlet.

Patterson says both were identified as close contacts of positive cases only after the flight took off from Iqaluit.

He says shortly after the plane arrived in Rankin Inlet, public health staff found the infected passengers, who were promptly tested and put in isolation.

Patterson says the risk of transmission in Rankin Inlet is low, but everyone still needs to follow public health measures.

Nunavut now has 41 active COVID-19 cases — 35 in Iqaluit, four in Kinngait and two in Rankin Inlet.

—

1:50 p.m.

Nova Scotia is reporting 52 new cases of COVID-19 today, as Premier Iain Rankin urges residents to stay home.

Officials say 44 of today’s new cases are in the province’s central zone, which includes the Halifax area.

Rankin announced a month-long lockdown for the Halifax region and several of its neighbouring communities on Thursday.

In a tweet following the release of today’s numbers, Rankin said people in the area must stay at home and follow the public health guidelines now that community spread is confirmed.

—

12:45 p.m.

Two Amazon fulfillment centres west of Toronto will partially close under new regional rules that allow temporary shutdowns of workplaces where five or more COVID-19  cases have surfaced over a two-week period.

Peel Region, which enacted the measures earlier this week, says the facilities are located on Heritage Road in Brampton, Ont., and Coleraine Drive in Bolton, Ont.

The rules state that closures can last up to 10 days and require affected employees to isolate and refrain from working elsewhere during that time.

—

12:30 p.m.

Ontario is reporting its second case of a rare blood clotting condition stemming from the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

Dr. Elizabeth Richardson, chief medical officer of health for Hamilton,  says a man in his sixties was diagnosed with immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia after his first dose of the vaccine.

She says the patient has received treatment and remains in hospital.

She notes that serious reactions to the vaccine are extremely rare.

Yesterday Ontario announced its first case of a blood clot related to the AstraZeneca shot. 

Canada has logged five such cases across the country, and administered more than 1.1 million doses of the AstraZeneca shot so far.

—

—

11:10 a.m.

Quebec is reporting 1,106 new cases of COVID-19 and 13 additional deaths, including three within the past 24 hours.

The Health Department says the number of hospitalizations declined by 22 to 662, while the number of people in intensive care rose by nine to 181.

Public health authorities say 83,628 doses of vaccine were administered yesterday, for a total of 2,763,535.

—

11 a.m.

Ontario is recording a slight decline in COVID-19-related hospitalizations as the number of daily infections tops 4,000 once again. 

The province logged 4,094 new COVID-19 cases and 24 new related deaths in the past 24 hours. 

That’s down from the 4,505 recorded on Friday, but up from levels seen earlier in the week. 

Hospitalizations declined by 10 to 2,277, but the number of patients in intensive care increased slightly to 833.

—

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 24, 2021

Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press