Covid versus Ottawa's magic money-printing press: The battle is joined

More than 200 delegates have already registered for the Summer Webinar of the National Pharmaceutical Congress: "Pharma's Purpose, People & Process Post-Covid. Who Will Thrive? Who Will Be Left Behind?" Featured panellists are Ronnie Miller, Hoffman-La Roche; Mike Egli, Aspen Healthcare Canada; Claude Perron, Amicus Therapeutics; Danielle Portnik, Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals; Peter Brenders, Kontollo Health [lead panellist]; Mitch Shannon, Chronicle Companies [host.] Mark the date of Tuesday, June 23, 11:00 to noon (EDT.) Registration is free. Space is limited. Sign up here.

⇒ Issue #56

⇒ Confirmed Covid cases in Canada as of 06/17: 101,097*

⇒ Confirmed Covid fatalities in Canada as of 06/17: 8,271*

⇒ Worldwide Covid cases as of 06/17: 8,192,700*

⇒ Worldwide Covid fatalities as of 06/17: 444,111*

June 17, 2020—From the Chronicle Command Centre in fragrant Etobicoke, Ont., today’s instalment of the Daily CurveFlattener is brought to you by Editorial Director Allan Ryan.

The feds in Ottawa are poised to extend the coverage provided by the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), according to news reports. CERB is a government program that provides recipients who lost their income because of Covid-19 with $2,000 per month, and was originally intended to run for 16 weeks. CERB opened for applications in April and reportedly received five million requests in the first week. Recipients who signed up early will be reaching the limit of their coverage in July. Indications late Tuesday (06/16) are that the program could be extended for an additional eight weeks. The governing Liberals, in a minority parliament, will require the support of other parties to pass the amendment to the original bill.

At the same time, the Libs say they will go hot and heavy on fraudulent CERB recipients and have threatened the miscreants with jail time and steep fines. This news comes even as the Liberals acknowledge there was confusion over the application process when the program was first rolled out. Some people thought they had to re-apply each month and others, often students, may have unwittingly applied for CERB, employment insurance or a student benefit announced at the same time. According to this report, the Canada Revenue Agency says Canadians have made 190,000 repayments regarding CERB, and the agency claims it is reviewing over 1,300 tips they have received regarding potential misuse of the program.

In British Columbia, CERB payments are believed to have played a role in a spike in drug overdose deaths that totalled 170 in May, the highest monthly toll in B.C. history. Health officials believe the increase is a result of drug impurities related to border closures and travel restrictions because of Covid-19, and a ‘sudden windfall’ of CERB cash.

COVID CHRONICLE 06/17/2020 

• Ain’t that a kick in the pants: The Seattle Times is reporting that a survivor of Covid-19 has been billed US$1.1 million for his hospital expenses. Discharged on May 5 to the cheers of nursing staff after being treated in hospital for 62 days, 70-year-old Michael Fior soon received his surprise packet, the 181-page hospital bill. Because of his age, the costs he incurred are expected to be covered by the government Medicare program, but the incident has shone new light on problems in the U.S. healthcare system. "It was a million bucks to save my life, and of course I'd say that's money well-spent ... But I also know I might be the only one saying that," the Times quoted Fior as saying.
  
• The Royal Canadian Mounted Police are investigating shipments of deadly pathogens from Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg to a lab in Wuhan, China. Last July, scientist Dr. Xiangguo Qiu, her husband Keding Cheng and her students from China were escorted from the lab by the RCMP when it was reported a package of pathogens had been sent to the Wuhan Institute of Virology four months earlier. The shipment reportedly did not include any coronaviruses but did contain Ebola and Henipa viruses. According to the CBC, newly-released access-to-information documents confirm for the first time who sent the package, what exactly was shipped, and the destination of the package. 
• A woman in her 20s who recovered from Covid-19 has received a double-lung transplant, made necessary after the coronavirus severely damaged her lungs. The transplant was performed at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. According to Dr. Ankit Bharat, surgical director of the lung transplant program there, the transplant was her only chance for survival and similar transplants may help save other patients whose lungs have been damaged by Covid-19. 
• Steroid therapy can cut deaths by one-third in patients who are critically ill with Covid-19, according to a press release from the University of Oxford. The Recovery Trial enrolled 2,100 patients who received 6 mg of dexamethasone per day for 10 days and then compared to 4,300 patients who received standard therapy. According to the researchers, the effect of dexamethasone was most striking among critically ill patients on ventilators. 

STORIES CHRONICLE IS WORKING ON TODAY

Senior editor John Evans has filed an article for Pediatric Chronicle on a longitudinal examination of how sleep disturbances can underly the co-occurrence of trauma and pediatric chronic pain.

RIGHT NOW WE ARE LISTENING TO... 

Yusuf Islam, aka Cat Stevens, received a mention in an earlier DCF as a voice somehow right for the times. His breakthrough album Tea for the Tillerman was released in 1970, and for the 50th anniversary, Islam has now gone back into the studio and re-imagined the entire recording. “I wanted to bring new life to these songs,” he told The Irish News. “These songs are very relevant to what is happening today.” Here’s an animated video of "Where Do The Children Play?" The full album drops in September.

TONIGHT WE ARE COOKING... 

Nothing. Nada. Zilch. That’s because it's National Takeout Day. Regulations regarding restaurants vary across the country, but in Toronto dining out is still a no-go, so we are happily participating in National Takeout Day, which occurs every Wednesday and was established to help support local eateries collect some much-needed cash. Not sure what we’re going to choose from the menu yet, but the food will be ordered from an establishment close by, so we can walk over to collect. That also saves the business from shelling out a significant percentage of the order total to one of those delivery services.

HOW IS YOUR WEEK GOING?

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That's it. Stay in touch, stay safe and enjoy your Wednesday. Publisher Mitch Shannon will be here tomorrow for your Thursday update.