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Amid third wave, University of Toronto’s Homer Tien takes over province’s COVID-19 vaccine task force: CBC
Tien, who’s also a surgeon at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and the president and CEO of Ornge, Ontario’s air ambulance agency, replaced retired Gen. Rick Hillier, whose contract expired at the end of March. Tien has been a member of the task force since its inception and was instrumental in executing Operation Remote Immunity, a mission to immunize remote and isolated Indigenous communities.
The province’s vaccination campaign continues to roll out amid supply challenges and a mounting third wave of COVID-19 infections – and Tien is no stranger to high-stress medical operations. In 1996, he was the first medical officer posted to the Canadian military’s counterterrorism team during the NATO mission in Bosnia. A decade later, he was deployed to a field hospital in Kandahar, Afghanistan, where he often treated the victims of roadside bomb bl
Planning, trust led to COVID-19 vaccination success in Northern Ontario First Nations Bookmark Please log in to listen to this story. Also available in French and Mandarin. Log In Create Free Account
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Ornge/Handout
In a game called Last Man Standing, about 31 adults stood around a plastic folding table outside the community centre. Each person had one hand on the table, where they had to keep it or be eliminated. The last one remaining, a man who stood for 16.5 hours without lifting his hand, walked away with keys to a new all-terrain vehicle.
The Globe and Mail Published April 9, 2021
handout/Handout
For the past two weeks, during a global pandemic, Pikangikum First Nation – a Northern Ontario community of nearly 3,600, located along the Berens River near the Manitoba border – has operated without a fully equipped police service or access to proper medical care.
Canada, meanwhile, appears to continue to suffer from long-term memory loss on what it means to be a treaty partner, as it relates to the legal and moral obligations stemming from the signing of Treaty 5.
And so Pikangikum Chief Dean Owen – knowing that federal and provincial lawmakers will not suddenly decide to wave a magic wand and turn around the destructive colonial systems currently in place, and that change will only come because First Nations demand it – is using this moment as an opportunity to transform policing services, bringing them up to the standards everyone else has in Canada.
As Ontario moves to Phase 2 of its vaccine rollout, the Ford government has tapped the head of the province’s air ambulance service to lead its vaccine task force.
Fast Facts: Medical officer of health Dr. Vera Etches is warning Ottawa that vaccination alone won t reduce rising case counts. Ottawa has surpassed 18,000 total COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began. A new COVID-19 testing centre will open up in Nepean for at least the next two weeks to meet rising demand. Ontario has tapped the head of Ornge Air Ambulance to lead the province through Phase 2 of its vaccination plan.
COVID-19 by the numbers in Ottawa (Ottawa Public Health data):
New COVID-19 cases: 198 new cases on Sunday
Total COVID-19 cases: 18,023
COVID-19 cases per 100,000 (previous seven days): 114.9
Positivity rate in Ottawa: 6.5 per cent (Mar. 26 to April 1)