Good evening, these are the top coronavirus headlines tonight:
Top headlines:
- The Globe’s Asia correspondent, James Griffiths, reports on the COVID-19 situation in Shanghai, as residents leave lockdown after two months.
- The do-it-yourself craze at the beginning of the pandemic drove up the price of lumber, but interest has waned, and prices are dropping.
In the past seven days, there were 264 deaths from COVID-19 nationally, down 35 per cent over the same period. At least 3,718 people are being treated in hospitals and 272 are in the ICU.
Canada’s inoculation rate is 17th among countries with a population of one million or more people.
Sources: Canada data is compiled from government websites, Johns Hopkins and COVID-19 Canada Open Data Working Group; international data is from Johns Hopkins University.
Coronavirus explainers: Coronavirus in maps and charts • Tracking vaccine doses
COVID-19 updates from Canada and the world
- Canada authorized a single booster shot of Pfizer and partner BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine for 16- and 17-year-olds today. In the United States, a booster dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is cleared for use among children as young as five years.
- Quebec has passed a law that ends the COVID-19 state of emergency today, but the government will retain some extra powers until the end of the year.
- In Shanghai, some 22 million residents, about 90 per cent of the population, who live in low-risk areas that have been declared infection free for two-weeks were permitted to leave their compounds this week. Moving around the city freely will require showing a negative PCR test taken within the last 72 hours, however, and regular testing will remain in place for the foreseeable future. Shanghai’s roads, parks and shops hummed back to life after two months of COVID-19 lockdown.
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Pandemic recovery
- While some big employers have embraced work-from-home policies that were initiated by the pandemic, others, including Tesla Inc., are asking employees to return to office. “Everyone at Tesla is required to spend a minimum of 40 hours in the office per week,” chief executive Elon Musk wrote in the email sent on Tuesday night.
- Lumber markets have been on a roller-coaster ride, after the COVID-19 pandemic initially eroded demand in the first half of 2020. In the summer of 2020, people stuck at home started a do-it-yourself bonanza, snapping up construction materials for decks, fences and renovations. Now, the price of lumber is dropping as interest in DIY renovations cools off.
- The pandemic pushed people to alter their purchasing behaviour in favour of physical goods, which caused the costs for transporting shipping containers to balloon. But since March, prices have been dropping.
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More reading
- In photos: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child has landed in Canada after the pandemic shut down performances in 2020. The Globe went backstage to see how the magic happens
Information centre
- Everything you need to know about Canada’s travel rules for vaccinated and unvaccinated people
- When will COVID-19 be endemic? The four factors that will shape the virus’s future
- Waste water is filling the COVID-19 data gap
Thank you for subscribing to our Coronavirus Update Newsletter. As the pandemic eases, we plan to wind this down and eventually cease sending, but have many other newsletters to keep you informed, including Globe Climate, Carrick on Money and Breaking News.
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Caora McKenna