Christmas 2020: Canada Expected to Register Over 5 Lakh COVID-19 Cases and 14,920 Deaths by Xmas Amid Ongoing Second Wave of Pandemic

Ottawa, December 12: Canada is expected to register 531,300-577,000 Covid-19 cases and 14,920 deaths by Christmas Day amidst the ongoing second wave of the pandemic, according to the country's health agency.

Some 100,000 new cases have been reported across the country in just the last three weeks. As of now, the country's overall caseload stood at 448,841 with 13,251 deaths. With Christmas holidays around the corner, the PHAC said that if people maintain their current rate of contact with others, the pandemic will continue to surge. Mexico Approves Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine for Emergency Use, Set to Receive 250,000 Doses.

In a statement on Friday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said: "Again this week, far too many provinces reported record highs in cases and hospitalizations. These numbers must go down.

"If we maintain the current number of people with whom each of us are in contact, the numbers will continue to surge, and we could reach over 12,000 new cases a day in January. "There is no other way, we must reduce our in-person contacts right now."

Over the last seven days, Canada registered more than 6,500 new cases daily, and 49 of the country's 99 health regions have reported more than 100 cases per 100,000 people.

"Ongoing high rates of infection in communities continuously leads to new infections, more and larger outbreaks, and spread into schools and high-risk settings, such as hospitals, long-term care facilities, correctional facilities, and shelters, where the Covid-19 spread is further amplified in close settings," Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam said on Friday.

"This is a difficult cycle of spread that can't be managed through outbreak response alone," she said. US President-Elect Joe Biden Urges People to Have Confidence in COVID-19 Vaccine.

"Covid-19 is still presenting a very clear danger to Canadians all across the country. We know that the vaccine is an important part of the solution in stopping the spread and reducing deaths, but we have a lot of work to do together as a country in the next several months," Health Minister Patty Hajdu said on Friday.

"We're entering into a very tricky period of time, of course, it's the holiday season, many of us are looking forward to a rest from our workplaces and an opportunity to have some downtime. But we're going to have to be very, very cautious during the next several weeks," Hajdu added.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Dec 12, 2020 05:04 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).