Canada on Wednesday implemented mandatory self-isolation for people arriving in the nation.
Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland initially said that the system would begin at midnight on Wednesday and require 14 days of isolation, but several hours later, government officials said the quarantine order had been in effect for more than 12 hours.
“It will be a legal obligation for people entering Canada from outside Canada,” Freeland said. “Essential workers are excluded.”
Penalties would be announced later, she said.
More than 1 million Canadians and permanent residents returned to the nation between March 14 and Friday last week, the Canada Border Services Agency said.
Truck drivers and healthcare workers crossing the border are exempted under the nation’s Quarantine Act, and Canada and the US had already closed their common border for all nonessential travel.
Canada relies on cross border trade for essential goods such as food and medicine.
People who have returned should be self-isolating at home, Freeland said, adding that it is critical to protect the health of Canadians and ultimately to ensure that the nation’s has as rapid an economic recovery as possible.
“If we can flatten the curve, then we can go back to normal life more quickly,” she said.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also announced that his government would offer C$2,000 (US$1,395) per month, over the next four months, for workers who lose their income as a result of the pandemic.
Canada is facing a once-in-a-generation challenge, Trudeau said, adding that 1 million Canadians applied for employment insurance in a week.
“Help is on the way,” Trudeau said, adding that the new benefit is available to any Canadian who loses their job because of COVID-19, whether they are full-time, contract or self-employed.
The benefit also covers a person who is sick or quarantined, or looking after someone sick, he added.
Workers still employed but not receiving income because of the crisis are also eligible.
He said that his government would also implement long-promised tax credits for newspapers, where they can claim on up to 25 percent of wages.
Trudeau made the remarks outside his residence, where he is in isolation after his wife tested positive for the virus.
He says his wife is doing “much, much better,” and that he and his children have no symptoms.
Canada is testing 10,000 people a day and has tested more than 142,000 people.
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
Three sisters from Ohio who inherited a dime kept in a bank vault for more than 40 years knew it had some value, but they had no idea just how much until just a few years ago. The extraordinarily rare coin, struck by the US Mint in San Francisco in 1975, could bring more than US$500,000, said Ian Russell, president of GreatCollections, which specializes in currency and is handling an online auction that ends next month. What makes the dime depicting former US president Franklin D. Roosevelt so valuable is a missing “S” mint mark for San Francisco, one of just two
RSS