In a Feb. 2 email to students and employees at the U of M, University president and vice-chancellor Michael Benarroch and provost and vice-president (academic) Diane Hiebert-Murphy announced that partial in-person teaching and learning will resume for some courses.
Ottawa declared a state of emergency Feb. 6 in response to the convoy of truckers with white supremacist ties currently occupying the city in protest of COVID-19-related restrictions and vaccine mandates.
The pandemic has disproportionately affected students and they are still feeling the residual damages caused by changes to the education system and the labour market. Although their situation is getting somewhat better, students’ lives have been changed permanently byCOVID-19 and they still lack proper support.
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected every aspect of social interaction and has been especially hard for older adults. Organizations catering to older adults have had to meet the challenge.
In the early parts of January, Premier Heather Stefanson was dragged through the mud for claiming Manitobans should fend for themselves through COVID-19. “This virus is running throughout our community and it’s up to Manitobans to look after themselves,” Stefanson said. For me, this quote evoked an eerily dystopian image of apocalypse survivors fighting for resources in a libertarian hellscape as their overlord looked on in her ivory tower. Stefanson has thrown equitable health policy out of the window for the health of the economy, and the most vulnerable will serve as the sacrificial lambs by which the divinity of her pragmatic policies rest on.
In a rare piece of good COVID-19 news, researchers in Texas are developing a COVID-19 vaccine called Corbevax that developers say will be based on conventional vaccine technology, will be cheaper to produce and less complicated to store. Crucially, they do not intend to patent the vaccine, hoping this will make it more accessible in low-income countries.
High school students across Manitoba walked out of class last Monday to demand improved COVID-19 safety measures as in-person learning resumes.
The ongoing surge of Omicron cases has some Winnipeg homeless shelters struggling to retain staff and recruit volunteers to operate their services.
Aleeza Gerstein and Lauren Kelly, assistant professors at the University of Manitoba, are spearheading investigations into the challenges faced by early learning and child-care centres (ELCC) during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Niki Ashton, NDP MP for Churchill-Keewatinook Aski, echoed some Manitoba First Nations’ calls for military support on reserves overwhelmed by rising COVID-19 cases.