The news comes exactly a week after Toronto’s Mayor urged residents to get their jabs, touting almost 30,000 vacant booking spots over the following week.

‘Vaccine hesitancy amongst staff persists,’ says letter from Revera and other chains petitioning the government for help. Revera, which also cited access to vaccinations as a challenge, says its staff vaccine rate is 50 per cent.

“How could the Crown ever think there was a public interest in prosecuting this?” asked Emma Carver, legal counsel for the Toronto Star.

In neighbourhoods with the largest concentrations of essential workers, COVID infections are increasing at more than double the rate of communities with the lowest numbers of front-line employees, data shows.

Meanwhile, the Ontario Government unveiled its second COVID-19-related budget last week.

Dozens of cases reported recently as University of Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier, Brock and Queen’s all have outbreaks.

Premier Doug Ford announced a move to a new “shutdown” phase of that will keep personal services closed in Toronto and see patios packed up for at least 28 days.

Vaccines ‘not reaching the highest risk communities,’ as variants take over, Ontario says. Some experts want to see the provinces’ rollout strategies change

New calculations by biostatistician and consultant Ryan Imgrund show how many people you would have to encounter in the next month to have a 50 per cent chance of exposure to COVID-19.

Aneri Panchal had a job, a home and a pending permanent residence application in Canada. A year after the pandemic hit, the woman is stuck in India and lost the life she worked hard to build here.