Canadian protests dissolve; political upheaval lingers: COVID updates

Protesters who had brought chaos to the streets of the Canadian capital of Ottawa for the last three weeks were almost entirely gone Sunday, driven off by police in riot gear.

Almost 200 arrests later, the blaring truck horns had disappeared, and streets that had been blocked by parked vehicles and roving protesters were open for traffic. But the fate of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other political leaders still hangs in the balance.

The protest began as an assault on COVID-19 vaccine mandates for cross-border truckers. But it grew to include other restrictions and even took aim at Trudeau, whose popularity sunk like a stone in recent polling.

“I think we’ve started something here,” said Mark Suitor, a 33-year-old protester from Hamilton, Ontario. “This is going to be a very big division in our country. I don’t believe this is the end.”

Also in the news:

►Hong Kong reported 15 coronavirus deaths and more than 6,000 confirmed cases for a second day in a surge the Chinese territory’s leader says is overwhelming hospitals.

►Indiana’s K-12 schools no longer need to report COVID-19 cases to the state, and the Indiana Department of Health announced Thursday that it was dropping remaining requirements for contact tracing and quarantining close contacts for schools without mask mandates.

📈Today’s numbers: The US has recorded more than 78.4 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and more than 935,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data. Global totals: More than 423 million cases and over 5.8 million deaths. More than 214.7 million Americans – 64.7% – are fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Pope Francis, crowd at St. Peter’s Square applaud health care workers

Pope Francis on Sunday hailed health care workers as heroes for their service, asking the public in St. Peter’s Square to join him in applause. Francis clapped his hands in what he said was a “great thank you” for health workers, including volunteers, who care for the sick. Italy was marking Sunday as a national day to pay tribute to health care workers. The Italian professional association of doctors and dentists counts 370 physicians who have died of COVID-19 in Italy alone.

“We must recall the many doctors, nurses, volunteers who are close to the sick, treat them, make them feel better, help them,” Francis said.

Biden to extend COVID national emergency

President Joe Biden said in a letter to Congress that he would extend the national emergency declared in March 2020 in response to the coronavirus pandemic that is set to expire March 1. The national emergency, declared by former President Donald Trump, allows the federal government more freedom to spend money and take emergency response actions that would otherwise be restricted.

“The COVID-19 pandemic continues to cause significant risk to the public health and safety of the nation,” Biden wrote in the letter.

Wisconsin reports child’s death from a rare condition linked to COVID-19

A Wisconsin child has died of the rare and poorly understood COVID-19-related Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children, becoming the state’s first such fatality and only the 60th in the nation. State health officials said the child, who was under 10 years old, came from southeastern Wisconsin but declined to provide the age, gender or date of the child’s death. The child, one of 183 to come down with the disease in Wisconsin, died sometime within the last month, said Tom Haupt, a respiratory disease epidemiologist for the state Department of Health Services. Nationwide there have been 6,851 cases, according to the most recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention posted Jan. 31.

The syndrome, which appears two to six weeks after a child has been exposed to COVID-19, can afflict children who have shown no COVID symptoms.

“The (children are) all universally very sick. They have fever, chest pain, vomiting, diarrhea,” said Greg Demuri, a pediatric infectious disease doctor with UW Health in Madison. “The most significant component is a weakening of the heart muscle. We’ve had to put a few children on heart medications.”