Pop-up clinic to open Saturday in Fort Erie (Crystal Beach)
Residents who need a first or second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine are invited to an upcoming Niagara Region Public Health clinic at the Crystal Ridge Community Centre in Fort Erie. This pop-up clinic will be available for walk-ins only, and both Moderna and Pfizer vaccines will be offered. Anyone aged 12 years or older can be vaccinated. The clinic will be open on August 14th from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Crystal Ridge Community Centre, 99 Ridge Rd S, Fort Erie, ON L0S 1B0.
Click here for more information.
Canada loosens more travel restrictions for fully vaccinated travellers
For more than a month, fully vaccinated Canadian travellers have been allowed to skip quarantine when returning home from abroad. In a continuation of its phased reopening of the border, effective today, fully vaccinated Americans can both enter Canada and skip the mandatory 14-day quarantine.
To be considered fully vaccinated, Americans must have received all required doses of a Health Canada-approved COVID-19 vaccine 14 days prior to entering Canada. Only U.S. citizens and permanent residents residing in and travelling from the United States will be permitted entry.
Click here for more information.
Ontario to invest in training 350 young people for creative industries
The Ontario government is investing almost $1 million to expand on-the-job training for 350 young people in creative industries like film, music, gaming and animation. The initiative is focused on youth over 16 with disabilities, who are newcomers to Ontario, Indigenous or Black.
Click here for more information.
Canada to impose additional financial and trade sanctions on Belarus
Today, new sanctions against Belarus were announced under the Special Economic Measures Act. The targeted sectors include transferrable securities and money market instruments, debt financing, insurance and reinsurance, petroleum products and potassium chloride products. The new measures impose restrictions on certain activities relating to Belarus’s financial sector, including transferrable securities and money market instruments, debt financing, insurance and reinsurance, petroleum products and potassium chloride products. These measures are being taken in solidarity with those of international partners. These measures are being taken on the first anniversary of the fraudulent August 2020 Belarusian presidential election, which followed a campaign marred by systematic voter repression, including state-sponsored violence against protestors, activists and journalists.
A full list of the sanctions can be found here.
Ontario invests $7 million into agri-food research
The Ontario government is investing $7 million into agri-food research projects that will support greater environmentally friendly agricultural practices, protect livestock health and welfare, and stimulate economic growth within the agri-food sector and Ontario’s rural communities in collaboration with the University of Guelph.
Click here for more information.
Over 23,000 deaths attributed to COVID-19 between March 2020 and May 2021
From March 2020 to mid-May 2021, there were an estimated 19,979 excess deaths in Canada, or 6.0% more deaths than what would be expected were there no pandemic, after accounting for changes in the population, such as aging. Over this same period, 23,050 deaths were directly attributed to COVID-19.
Over the first 15 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada experienced significant overall excess mortality over two distinct periods: the first in the spring of 2020 (from the onset of the pandemic in March, to June 2020), and the second from the fall of 2020 to the winter of 2021 (from the end of September 2020 through to the end of January). These periods corresponded with elevated levels of deaths directly attributable to COVID-19 itself.
Click here for more information.
Reading Recommendations
UN sounds alarm on ‘irreversible’ climate impacts, but offers hope
CBC News
The UN climate panel sounded a dire warning Monday, saying the world is dangerously close to runaway warming — and that humans are “unequivocally” to blame.
Already, greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere are high enough to guarantee climate disruption for decades if not centuries, scientists warn in a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
That’s on top of the deadly heat waves, powerful hurricanes and other weather extremes that are happening now and are likely to become more severe.
Describing the report as a “code red for humanity,” UN Secretary General António Guterres urged an immediate end to coal energy and other high-polluting fossil fuels.
Posthaste: As Canada welcomes back Americans, our late summer tourism boom could be disrupted by Delta variant — and labour shortages
Financial Post
Opening [the] borders to fully vaccinated U.S. residents will be a boost, but there’s a growing concern that the rise of the Delta variant could stall progress, particularly in parts of the U.S. where vaccination rates are low, RBC economists Nathan Janzen and Rannella Billy-Ochieng said in a note on Friday.
“Still, with over 80 per cent of eligible Canadians at least partially vaccinated, another round of domestic lockdowns looks less likely — and much of the travel/tourism recovery to date has been driven by domestic tourists,” the economists noted.
In July, RBC estimated that the stock of potential tourists within Canada is around 1 million people larger than usual.
Niagara COVID-19 statistics tracker
These data show the status of the COVID-19 pandemic in Niagara. The Province of Ontario is now using a provincewide approach to reopening, and these data no longer have any influence on Niagara’s restrictions. Lower numbers are better in all metrics.
| December 18 | December 25 | January 1 | January 8 | January 15 | January 22 | January 29 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reproductive number | 1.4 | 1.8 | 1.4 | 1.1 | 1.0 | 0.7 | 0.9 |
| New cases per 100,000 | 101.2 | 267.3 | 469.8 | 575.8 | 507.1 | 295.5 | 250.6 |
| New cases per day (not including outbreaks) | 60.7 | 178.7 | 311.7 | 376.9 | 325.4 | 182.7 | 145.7 |
| Percent of hospital beds occupied | 97% | 95.2% | 98.2% | 103.2% | 104.5% | 103.6% | 106% |
| Percent of intensive care beds occupied | 78.8% | 77.3% | 87.9% | 87.9% | 90.9% | 89.4% | 93.9% |
| Percentage of positive tests | 6.1% | 15.6% | 28.1% | 28.6% | 26.6% | 21.2% | 16.2% |
Last updated: July 31, 2021
Click here for definitions of terms used in this table.
There are currently 0 patients admitted to Niagara Health with COVID-19. There are currently 0 patients with COVID-19 in a Niagara Health Intensive Care Unit.
Data are drawn from Niagara Region Public Health and Niagara Health.
Niagara COVID vaccination tracker
Niagara’s most up-to-date vaccination numbers are presented below, along with comparison data from Ontario, Canada, and G7 countries.
| Percentage of population with one dose | Percentage of population fully vaccinated | |
|---|---|---|
| Niagara | 82.7% | 78.2% |
| Ontario | 84.6% | 79.1% |
| Canada | 84.7% | 78.6% |
| United States | 75% | 64% |
| United Kingdom | 78% | 72% |
| Germany | 76% | 74% |
| France | 80% | 77% |
| Italy | 83% | 76% |
| Japan | 80% | 79% |
| World | 63% | 53% |
Total doses administered in Niagara: 634,529
New daily doses administered to Niagara residents: 960
Last updated: August 9, 2021
Data are drawn from Niagara Region, the Government of Ontario, and Oxford University’s Our World in Data project.
Free rapid COVID-19 testing kits are now available to businesses. Visit gncc.ca/workplace-self-screening-kits to learn more and reserve kits for your organization.
Information on government grants, resources, and programs, policies, forms, and posters for download and use, are available here. The GNCC is here to support you. Contact us with any questions you have.
