Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer says in the past week there has been a 64 per cent increase in new variant cases of COVID-19. Dr. Theresa Tam says these variants are more transmissible and they increase the risk of more serious outcomes.

The increase is now playing out in hospitals, causing a strain on the health care systems in some areas. To date, there have been over 970,000 cases of the virus and 22,900 deaths. Both Dr. Tam and the Prime Minister urge everyone getting ready to celebrate the various religious holidays coming up, to continue to be vigilant and follow the public health guidelines.

Justin Trudeau also announced today (Tues) that Canada is on track to have received in total, 44-million doses of vaccine by the end of June. Five-million doses of Pfizer that were expected later in the summer have now been moved up to June. One-million Pfizer doses are expected weekly through the end of May, rising to 2-million per week in June, and that’s not including the AstraZeneca and Moderna vaccines.

Dr. Tam added that the new information about AstraZeneca where a rare type of blood clot has been reported in some instances in Europe, is why Health Canada decided to move the age limit for the vaccine to those 55 and over until more research has been done. She says no instances of this blood clot have been experienced in this country.