The latest news on COVID-19 developments in Canada

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

5:40 p.m.

Alberta is reporting 1,799 new cases of COVID-19 and four more deaths due to the virus.

The province continues to have the highest infection rate in the country.

There are currently 24,962 active infections in Alberta.

Officials say 737 people are in hospital due to COVID-19, and 169 of them are receiving intensive care.

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3:55 p.m.

Saskatchewan is reporting 183 new cases of COVID-19 today.

Two more people have died, both in their 70s.

The province is now dealing with 2,016 active cases.

It is reporting a seven-day average of 203 new cases, the lowest since April.

There are 163 people in hospital, 37 of whom are in intensive care.

As of Tuesday, 8,628 cases of variants of concern had been identified by screening in Saskatchewan.

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3:50 p.m.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says he will follow public health advice on what vaccine to get for his second dose. 

Singh received the first dose of Oxford-AstraZeneca on April 22. 

He says he is happy to be vaccinated and whatever is offered to him first will be the vaccine he takes for the second dose.

Singh is among a long list of federal and provincial politicians who got the AstraZeneca vaccine, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, Health Minister Patty Hajdu, Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole, and the premiers of Ontario, British Columbia and New Brunswick.

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3:10 p.m.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says his doctor told him he should get a second shot of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

He recently received his first dose and fielded the question as Canadians wonder about mixing doses.

Trudeau says that advice shouldn’t be provided by politicians, and public health officials and scientists are looking into it.

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3 p.m.

A parliamentary committee has passed an NDP motion to look into Revera long-term care homes and the company’s ownership by a federal Crown corporation.

The motion from New Democrat Matthew Green asks the government estimates and operations committee to call on witnesses, including the chairs of Revera and the public-service pension manager that owns it.

Revera, which operates more than 500 seniors homes in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom, is a for-profit chain owned by the Public Sector Pension Investment Board.

The NDP has previously demanded the government transform Revera into a publicly managed entity and work to phase out all private long-term care, despite its falling under provincial jurisdiction.

Multiple recent studies have found that for-profit nursing homes were more likely to experience more widespread outbreaks of COVID-19, as well as more deaths.

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2:50 p.m.

Nova Scotia is stopping the use of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine as a first dose.

The Health Department says the “decision is based on an abundance of caution” due to an observed increase in the rare blood-clotting condition linked to this vaccine.

The department also says it has enough mRNA vaccine to immunize people age 40 and older, and it will reschedule anyone who was to receive AstraZeneca to instead be inoculated with Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna “in a timely manner.”

The AstraZeneca vaccine has been linked to vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia, or VITT, in other provinces.

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2:45 p.m.

More than 655,000 doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine from the global vaccine sharing alliance known as COVAX, are scheduled to arrive and be distributed to provinces sometime next week, but most provinces have already said they plan to put them on ice in reserve for second doses.

Manitoba and Nova Scotia became the latest two provinces to announce plans not to use the vaccine for further first doses with rare exceptions.  

Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Quebec all made that call Tuesday. 

Ontario was the only province to cite, as its reason for pausing the use for first doses, the safety concerns over the rare but serious blood-clotting syndrome that has been potentially linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Canada has already received 2.3 million doses, out of almost 24 million purchased. 

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2:45 p.m.

Nova Scotia is reporting 149 new cases of COVID-19.

There are 116 cases in the Halifax area, 13 in the western zone, 11 in eastern zone and nine in northern zone.

Public health says it has cleared the backlog of 200 positive cases it was working to confirm at the end of last week.

Nova Scotia has 1,621 active cases of COVID-19 and there are 73 people in hospital, including 14 in intensive care.

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1:45 p.m.

Yukon’s health minister says the territory will be vaccinating all youth 12 years and older with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

Tracy-Anne McPhee says the territory has reached a deal with the federal government to get enough doses to fully vaccinate all 2,641 youth.

McPhee says the goal is to give a first dose by the end of the school year and fully vaccinate youths by mid-July.

Yukon has one active case of COVID-19.

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1:30 p.m.

Manitoba is reporting 364 new COVID-19 cases and three deaths. 

That brings the total deaths to date to 1,000. 

The five-day average test positivity rate remains high at 12.1 per cent provincially and 14.4 per cent in Winnipeg.

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1:30 p.m.

Newfoundland and Labrador is moving communities in the western part of the province into alert level 4 at midnight.

Chief medical officer of health Dr. Janice Fitzgerald says there are three known COVID-19 cases linked to a school in the Codroy Valley area.

She says communities from South Branch to Port aux Basques will move to alert level 4, under which gyms and restaurant dining rooms are closed and gatherings limited.

Health officials in the province are reporting 10 new COVID-19 cases today. 

The province has 81 active reported infections and one person in hospital with the disease.

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1 p.m. 

Manitoba has opened COVID-19 vaccination appointments to everyone aged 18 and up. 

Health officials say supplies have been increasing steadily and everyone aged 12 and up should get a first dose in the first half of June.

Manitoba is also adjusting its plan to distribute Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines. 

First doses at medical clinics and pharmacies will now only be given to people who might not otherwise be immunized at other sites. 

Most will be held for second doses of people who received an AstraZeneca shot in the first go-around.

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12:25 p.m.

New Brunswick is reporting nine new cases of COVID-19 today, including two travel-related cases involving New Brunswickers isolating outside the province.

New Brunswick has 123 active reported cases of COVID-19.

Seven patients are in hospital with the disease in the province, including three in intensive care.

Four New Brunswickers are hospitalized with COVID-19 out of province. 

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12 p.m.

Ontario expects to receive more than 254,000 doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine next week and will be reserving them for second shots.

It’s still determining, however, when it will start administering those second doses.

The province announced a pause yesterday on using AstraZeneca for first shots due to an increased risk of a rare blood-clotting syndrome linked to the vaccine.

There have been at least eight cases in Ontario of the rare blood clotting syndrome linked to the AstraZeneca shot out of more than 901,800 doses given in the province. 

None of the Ontario cases have been fatal. 

The province also says it is developing a plan to vaccinate children aged 12 to 17 starting in June.

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11:20 a.m.

Quebec is reporting 745 new cases of COVID-19 today and 11 more deaths attributed to the novel coronavirus, including three within the past 24 hours.

Health officials say hospitalizations dropped by 10, to 530, and 126 people were in intensive care, a drop of two.

The province says 72,946 doses of a COVID-19 vaccine were administered Tuesday; about 44 per cent of Quebecers have received at least one dose.

Quebec has reported a total of 360,201 cases of COVID-19 and 11,012 deaths linked to the virus.

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10:30 a.m.

Ontario is counting 2,320 new COVID-19 diagnoses, and 32 added deaths. 

The province says the positive cases come from nearly 45,700 tests. 

It says 1,673 COVID-19 patients are in hospital, including 776 in ICU.

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10 a.m.

Nunavut is reporting eight new cases of COVID-19 today, bringing the territory’s active case count to 69.

All active cases are in Iqaluit, where an outbreak has been ongoing since the city’s first case was declared April 14.

Iqaluit remains under a strict lockdown with all schools, non-essential businesses and workplaces closed.

Travel is also restricted out of Iqaluit to other Nunavut communities.

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 12, 2021.

The Canadian Press

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version said in one of the 2:45 p.m. items that B.C. was among the provinces to announce plans not to use the AstraZeneca vaccine for further first doses.