The financial toll of the pandemic—on cities Welcome to the Maclean's daily newsletter. As the coronavirus disrupts life in Canada, and Canadians get used to the notion of "social distancing" and "flattening the curve," Maclean's has expanded this newsletter to include everything you need to know about the global pandemic. You'll still find our best stories of the day at the bottom of the newsletter, but we'll also catch you up on news and notes from around the world. QUOTE OF THE DAY: ““I’m not afraid of corona. I’m afraid we’ll die from hunger,” said Mohamed al-Sayid, an Egyptian worker stuck in Saudi Arabia after borders were closed. Millions of suddenly jobless migrant workers fear the same fate. At least 25,000 Canadians have tested positive for COVID-19 and nearly 800 have died. Worldwide, there are nearly two million cases while 120,000 people have died.
The financial toll of the pandemic is wreaking havoc on municipal budgets. Toronto’s red ink is an estimated $780 million and rising while Vancouver could be down at least $189 million by the end of the year, says the Globe and Mail. The concern is that, as most municipalities are not allowed to run deficits, they will have to lay off huge numbers of workers and cut services to balance their books, if there’s no help from the provinces or Ottawa.
Oceanex, a shipping company that delivers 50 per cent of the freight, including food, that arrives in Newfoundland, says it’s losing $2 million a week because of dropping demand and may have to scale back its deliveries. Smithfield Foods has shut its massive pork processing plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, after nearly 250 workers tested positive for the coronavirus. That one plant accounts for around five per cent of the United States’s pork production.
Construction and manufacturing sectors were allowed to reopen in Spain, where the death toll has slowed recently, though more than 500 people died on Sunday bringing the cumulative toll to more than 17,000.
Iceland has tested around 10 per cent of its population, more than any other nation in the world. And it found that “about 50 per cent of those who test positive for the virus are asymptomatic when they are tested.” As the country’s population is less than 400,000, it hasn’t undergone a general lockdown and is “testing its citizens at random by selecting names out of the country's main telephone directory, another large-scale testing strategy that has not been adopted elsewhere,” USA Today reports.
Tired of your current musical selections? Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters has pandemic playlist advice in The Atlantic. “In order to get through this difficult period (and I truly believe that we will get through this, in time), it is important to recognize the many stages of isolation and anxiety, and to pair them with appropriate musical accompaniment,” he wrote.
The preening feline champions in cat vs. dog obstacle course competitions (two fun ones are here and here) can be a bit much for dog lovers. Even Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling commented: “I identify wholeheartedly with the dog in this video and while, yes, I suppose the cat wins in a technical sense, I personally would have deducted points for its air of insufferable smugness.”
—Patricia Treble As of the latest update, this is the number of confirmed cases in Canada. We're updating this chart every day.
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