Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - September 8, 2020, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE A3 COVID-19 PANDEMIC CITY EDITOR: SHANE MINKIN 204-697-7292 ● CITY.DESK@FREEPRESS.MB.CA ● WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM A3 TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 8, 2020 COVID-19 AT A GLANCE Cases MANITOBA Confirmed: 1,338 Recovered: 910 Deaths: 16 Active: 412 CANADA Confirmed: 132,136 Recovered: 116,456 Deaths: 9,146 (As of 2:43 p.m. on Monday.) The latest from Manitoba ● Fifteen new COVID-19 cases were announced Monday, bringing the total number of reported cases in Manitoba to 1,338. Seven cases are in Winnipeg, six in Prairie Mountain and one each in Interlake-Eastern and Southern Health. There are 412 active cases and 910 individuals have recovered. Thirteen people are in hospital with three in intensive case. The latest from elsewhere ● Canada’s chief public health doctor says a slow but steady increase in the number of people testing positive for COVID-19 is a cause for concern. Dr. Theresa Tam said the average daily number of people testing positive over the last week is 545 — a 25 per cent increase over the previous week which saw a daily average of 435, and 390 a week before that. That number in- creased every day over the last week prompting Tam to remind Canadians not to get complacent about their risk of contracting the novel coronavirus. Tam said most Canadians are following public health advice and that has allowed Canada to keep the COVID-19 pandemic “under manageable control” but says she is concerned about the uptick in positive cases. ● A Kentucky state representative announced that she has tested positive for the coronavirus. The Courier-Journal reported that State Rep. Attica Scott, a Louisville Democrat, said in a video posted to social media that she took the test last week and got the results back on Sunday. Scott’s announcement came on the same day Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear announced a record number of positive coronavirus cases for the second straight week in Kentucky. ● West Virginia University’s Morgantown campus announced that in-person classes will be cancelled today, with nearly all undergraduate classes moving online on Wednesday. The chan- ges are a response to a recent increase in positive cases among students and a concern that cases may increase even more following reports of parties over the holiday weekend where groups should have been in quarantine. The university placed 29 students on interim suspension on Sunday amid ongoing COVID-19 investigations. Additional sanctions are pending. ● Fuelled by a sharp surge of coronavirus contagion just as the school year opens, Spain has now officially more than half a million confirmed coronavirus cases since the beginning of the pandemic. The health ministry on Monday reported 26,560 new infections since its last report on Friday, or an average of 8,800 daily, bringing the total since February to 525,549. Most new cases show new symptoms and the spike is so far not over- whelming hospitals. During the same period 29,516 people have died in Spain with the new coronavirus, although the real death toll is believed to be much higher given insufficient testing in March and April. ● As school resumes for millions of children, the World Health Organization is appealing for people not to stigmatize kids who come down with COVID-19 or their families. WHO emergencies chief Dr. Michael Ryan said Monday that anyone can get this disease. Ryan alluded to concerns and anxieties felt by many parents if their child were to contract the coronavirus, fearing they might become “pariahs” if the child’s illness leads to the entire class being sent home. He emphasized that schools, too, should not be left alone — and that public health authorities should work with them. ● Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he has delayed plans to impose overnight curfews in 40 cities and towns hit hard by the coronavirus by 24 hours in order to “consult” with the communities. In a news conference Monday, Netanyahu said the curfews will now go into effect tonight at 7 p.m. and last until 5 a.m. The government has been forced to take action after failing to contain an outbreak that has claimed more than 1,000 lives and remains at record levels of new infections. Netanyahu announced the curfew plan on Sunday but decided against full lockdowns after an uproar by politically powerful religious leaders. Many of the hardest-hit commun- ities are home to ultra-Orthodox populations. The outbreak has raised fears of a nationwide lockdown during the upcoming Jewish New Year. Quote: “If I could get a vaccine tomorrow I’d do it. If it would cost me the election I’d do it. We need a vaccine and we need it now.” — Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, when asked whether he would get a vaccine for COVID-19 Gas fuels optimism for resource minister O’Regan touts Canadian LNG exports as part of low-emission economy O TTAWA — Canadian LNG is the best choice for global energy in-vestors looking for sustainable and competitive natural gas production, Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan said Monday. His speech on the opening day of the virtual Gastech 2020 conference comes just two weeks before Prime Minis- ter Justin Trudeau is set to unveil his promised “ambitious green agenda” in a throne speech laying out his govern- ment’s COVID-19 economic recovery plan. O’Regan hinted at some of what may come in that plan, including promises of investments in the electrical grid and energy efficiency programs, a focus on workers and investing in technology to make fossil fuels cleaner. “We’ll get to where we need to be to- morrow by using what we have at our fingertips today,” O’Regan said. He said the best path to a healthy, low-emission economy includes Canada making natural gas a greener product that can be sold overseas — mainly to Asian nations — to replace coal as a source of electricity. That includes developing better carbon-capture and storage technology, as well as investing in research and commercialization to come up new ways to get gas to be more sustainable. Politically, support for LNG crosses party lines in Ottawa. A plan to sell Canadian LNG to overseas market was one of the chief climate change policies in the Conservative campaign in 2019 and was also part of new Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole’s leadership cam- paign platform. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has also been supportive of LNG projects, par- ticularly the LNG Canada project in northern British Columbia that is also fully backed by the provincial NDP government in B.C. O’Regan said the International Energy Agency forecasts growth in demand for gas for decades and that “bodes well for Canada.” The IEA’s own forecasts are a bit more complex than that. Looking at ex- isting policies around the world, it pre- dicted in 2019 that LNG will grow 36 per cent over the next 20 years. How- ever under a “sustainable development scenario” that transforms the world’s energy use in line with the Paris cli- mate change agreement goals on global warming, it expects natural gas use to peak by the end of this decade. The IEA also warned that shipping LNG to Asia may not be as attractive as some think given dropping prices for renewables and rising prices for nat- ural gas. Those warnings however came be- fore the COVID-19 lockdowns curbed demand and saw gas prices plummet, a scenario the agency says will not re- verse itself very quickly. Keith Stewart, a senior energy strat- egist at Greenpeace Canada, said the 11 LNG project proposals in Canada which O’Regan referenced in his speech are likely to become “white elephants” that are abandoned in favour of everything from wind and solar to hydrogen. He said many major investors have al- ready shown reluctance if not outright refusals, to back fossil fuels any longer. The IEA does say that switching from coal to gas reduced global emissions more than 500 million tonnes between 2010 and 2019, an amount equal to two- thirds of Canada’s total annual green- house gas emissions. It estimated that replacing coal with gas in existing power plants could save 1.2 billion tonnes of emissions, noting that may be the best case for scenario for gas. Catherine Abreu, executive director of the Climate Action Network Canada, said initially O’Regan’s Monday speech sounded good to her, talking about in- vesting in a transition for workers, electricity grids and energy efficiency programs. “Then I realized it was actually a speech about LNG disguised as a speech about renewable energy and I felt really duped,” she said. She said she is trying to remain hope- ful about the throne speech but is wor- ried it will provide “token” acknowledg- ments or investments for clean energy “but then continues this trend that we’ve seen of the real priority and the real investment going toward the fossil fuel sector.” — The Canadian Press MIA RABSON TROY FLEECE / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan (left) says selling Canadian natural gas is part of a plan to create a greener economy. A_03_Sep-08-20_FP_01.indd A3 2020-09-07 9:04 PM ;