Test positivity rate tops 50% over 2 days in Bearskin Lake as First Nation in Ontario in emergency state
CBC
A fly-in First Nation in northwestern Ontario has declared a state of emergency and gone into lockdown due to a rapidly rising number of cases of COVID-19.
The state of emergency in Bearskin Lake First Nation, where fewer than 400 people live on reserve some 600 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, was declared Wednesday.
Only essential travel is allowed, and all community members are required to remain in their homes and only leave for supplies and groceries.
"It's very stressful. It's a lot of anxiety, a lot of uncertainty, a lot of fear," Charles Fox told CBC News in a phone interview late Thursday afternoon.
Fox is a former Nishnawbe Aski Nation grand chief and Ontario regional chief. As a Bearskin Lake band member, he's helping the First Nation's response to the virus.
Over 10 per cent of the community's population has already tested positive, with more than 50 cases affecting over two dozen households.
"Babies are testing positive. Elders are testing positive. Your core front-line support and essential workers are testing positive," Fox said.
"When you have that, it renders the community almost helpless."
Fox said several people who perform essential work in Bearskin Lake have tested positive, including community leaders and already limited health-care workers.
Others who've tested negative are now stepping in to help, forming lists of households that require food, water, chopped wood and common cold medication.
Fox said resources are severely strained and community members are doing what they can to meet the daily needs of the First Nation.
"That's the challenge that the leadership has, and they're doing the best they can to cope with that and come up with answers," he added.
As of Thursday night, Fox said there have not been any community members who have required hospitalization, but they're also looking at what steps should be taken if it comes to that.
"Which urban centres will be able to accommodate the needs for hospitalization?" He asked. "We all know the strain that the hospitals in municipalities and urban centres are currently facing."
At a Tim Hortons in downtown Hamilton, drivers intent on getting their morning double doubles brave the murky waters of the parking lot, as sloshing waves reach as high as their car bumpers.
Windsor-Essex, Chatham-Kent and Sarnia can all expect between 20 and 40 millimetres of rainfall this weekend.
More Alberta seniors are now eligible for a provincially funded RSV vaccine.
More than 100 workers at a steel plant in eastern Ontario are being laid off either temporarily or permanently, as a company with facilities in Quebec and Ontario cuts its workforce due to challenging market conditions — including U.S. tariffs.
A small town northwest of Thunder Bay, Ont., has become the unlikely home for hundreds of foreign workers, but many may have to leave the community they've embraced after the end of a federal program put in place to fill gaps in Canada's labour market.
There's mixed reaction in Waterloo to an injuction allowing police to detain, arrest and charge anyone who is participating in unsanctioned street parties in that city this weekend.
Diabetes Canada is excited about Prince Edward Island's new pharmacare deal with the federal government, but hopes the province will reevaluate copays on diabetes supplies, says a senior manager with the organization.
After 26 years of accommodating guests from across the world, Faith Embleton says she and her husband Ken are ready to sell their bed and breakfast.
A group of big-name companies including Google, Meta and Dow have signed a pledge to support tripling the world's nuclear energy capacity by 2050, a signal of the technology's growing resurgence in popularity.
Five years on, Toronto-area doctors and public health officials are looking back at what they've learned since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and most agree the early experience will prove useful if the city faces another infectious disease crisis.
City staff would like Londoners to take a good look around their home and ask themselves a direct and possibly difficult question: Could everyone in your family survive at home, without leaving and with no other help, for a full 72 hours?
Liberal Leader Mark Carney will officially become Canada's next prime minister within a few hours, taking the reins as the country barrels toward a general election and continues to fend off verbal and economic attacks from U.S. President Donald Trump.
Recent cyberattacks in Newfoundland and Labrador should have been a wake up call for the federal government about the reality of an increasingly hostile world, says one cybersecurity expert.