Even with strong containment measures, as many as 22,000 Canadians could die of COVID-19 in the coming months.That's the worst-case scenario set out by federal public health officials this morning at a briefing in Ottawa.The Public Health Agency of Canada says short-term estimates are more reliable, and that up to 700 people could die by the end of next week.Officials warn that if people don't obey social distancing and self-isolation rules, the death toll could be much higher.Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam says ``we cannot prevent every death but we must prevent every death that

WestJet says it plans to bring back nearly 6,400 employees on to its payroll with the help of Ottawa's emergency wage subsidy program.WestJet chief executive Ed Sims made the announcement in a video posted to Twitter.He says employees will be back on the company payroll once the federal government has approved the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy program.Air Canada made a similar announcement on Wednesday that it would use the program to bring back about 16,500 employees.Sims says it doesn't mean all the employees will be automatically coming back to work because there might not be work for them

There are 19,291 confirmed and presumptive cases in Canada. Quebec: 10,031 confirmed (including 175 deaths, 827 resolved) Ontario: 5,276 confirmed (including 174 deaths, 2,074 resolved) Alberta: 1,423 confirmed (including 29 deaths, 519 resolved) British Columbia: 1,336 confirmed (including 48 deaths, 838 resolved) Nova Scotia: 342 confirmed (including 1 death, 77 resolved) Saskatchewan: 271 confirmed (including 3 deaths, 88 resolved) Newfoundland and Labrador: 232 confirmed (including 2 deaths, 74 resolved) Manitoba: 206 confirmed (including 3 deaths, 69 resolved), 15 presumptive Ne

Canada's deputy minister of foreign affairs has tested positive for COVID-19. Marta Morgan has been the top official in the department for just under a year, after leading the Immigration Department, and is the first woman to hold the job. Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne shared the diagnosis on Twitter. He wished Morgan a full and speedy recovery and called her an invaluable part of the foreign-affairs team. Several ministers and MPs have isolated themselves out of concern that they have the respiratory illness but Morgan is the most senior Canadian government figure to test positive. Cha

Ontario is reporting 379 new cases of COVID-19 today, including 21 more deaths.That brings the totals in the province to 4,726 confirmed cases, including 153 deaths and 1,802 cases that have been resolved.The new cases represent an 8.7 percent increase over Monday, marking the second day in a row that the growth rate has been under 10 percent.There are now 614 people in Ontario hospitalized with COVID-19, with 233 of them in intensive care and 187 of those people on ventilators. There are at least 51 long term care homes in Ontario with one or more cases of COVID-19, and there have been at lea

3M says it will continue to send N95 respirators to Canada after reaching an agreement with the White House to import millions of the increasingly scarce medical face masks from China for use in the United States. The Minnesota-based company announced the news in a release late Monday after President Donald Trump said 3M would be producing 166.5 million masks over the next few months for the U.S. market. Trump picked a fight with 3M last week after hearing reports it was selling its masks outside the U.S. despite the fact there wasn't enough supply in the country to meet the needs of health

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says 240,000 people successfully applied for emergency relief in the first few hours after Ottawa opened the process.Only people with birthdays in the first three months of the year can apply for the Canada Emergency Response Benefit today.The benefit offers $500-a-week payments for workers who have lost all of their income.Trudeau says changes to the program will come soon to offer help for people whose hours have been slashed but who are still working a little.

Commercial vessels and passenger ferries face more restrictions in a government effort to clamp down on the spread of the novel coronavirus. Transport Canada has ordered a stop on all non-essential vessels with a capacity of 12 or more passengers, such as recreation and tourism vessels. BC Ferries and other essential vessel operators have been told to immediately cut in half the maximum number of passengers carried on their ships. Over the weekend, BC ferries chopped its service after it said ridership was down by about 80 per cent.

The steps the Ontario government has taken so far to limit the spread of COVID-19 have likely saved tens of thousands of lives, public health officials said Friday, but even with further action the death toll could reach as high as 15,000. Projections released by the province showed 100,000 Ontario residents could likely have died over the full course of the pandemic if the province hadn't implemented measures such as widespread closures of businesses and schools in order to promote physical distancing. As it is, the figures estimate thousands of people could still die without more aggressive