Food supply disruptions are leading to higher prices Welcome to the Maclean's daily newsletter. As the coronavirus disrupts life in Canada, and Canadians get used to the notion of "social distancing" and "flattening the curve," Maclean's has expanded this newsletter to include everything you need to know about the global pandemic. You'll still find our best stories of the day at the bottom of the newsletter, but we'll also catch you up on news and notes from around the world. QUOTE OF THE DAY: “This is, I believe, the end of our beginning of this pandemic” — Dr. Bonnie Henry, British Columbia’s provincial health officer, as she released new modelling that showed the province has flattened its epidemic curve, and is set for a cautious reopening. The number of Canadians infected with COVID-19 has topped 62,000, while more than 4,000 people have died. Worldwide, 3.6 million people have been infected while 255,000 have died. It’s been 100 days since Ontario reported its first COVID-19 cases, and in that time the virus has killed 1,300 people—75 per cent of them nursing home residents. The Toronto Star investigates whether some of those deaths may have been averted. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious diseases scientist at the University of Toronto, notes a new method of testing evaluated in JAMA Network. It pools together many potential COVID-19 samples and tests them as one. If positive, then the individual samples can be tested, but if negative, then all the samples are clear and valuable testing supplies will be conserved as well as the process speeded up. “Efficient, cost-effective, smart,” explains Bogoch, who frequently answers COVID-19 questions for Maclean's. Dr. Rick Bright, who was ousted last month from his position as head of the U.S. federal office charged with developing the coronavirus vaccine, formally filed a whistleblower complaint. He says he “pressed for urgent access to funding, personnel and clinical specimens, including viruses,” and alleges that his warnings were met with “indifference which then developed into hostility” by leaders at the Department of Health and Human Services, CNN reports. Britain has overtaken Italy as the European nation with the most deaths from COVID-19. To date, more than 32,000 residents have died, more than any nation except the United States, which has five times the population, Reuters reports. Doctors in France have evidence that a patient admitted to a Paris hospital in December was infected with COVID-19, far earlier than the first official reports from Jan. 24. That would push back the virus’s arrival and undetected circulation in Europe to a time even before it was identified as a new coronavirus. A recent investigation in the United States found a COVID-19 death three weeks before the previously known first recorded death. These revelations are helping to provide a better sense of how the virus has spread throughout the world. Since April 1, Kate Bowler, a professor at Duke Divinity School, devoted an ever-growing Twitter thread to one particular aspect of parenthood. As she explains, “Every night, in the sweetest voice, my six-year-old asks me a question in order to try and stall me from leaving. I commit to documenting these questions every night for the next 30 days because THAT KID HAS GAME.” —Patricia Treble As of the latest update, this is the number of confirmed cases in Canada. We're updating this chart every day.
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