After steadily declining in June and flattening out in early July, Canada’s COVID-19 has been on the uptrend over the past two weeks.”There’s this gradual but progressive creep of increasing new cases,” Dr. Matthew Oughton, an infectious diseases specialist at the McGill University Health Centre in Montreal, said Thursday.
A significant number of these new cases can be linked to known outbreaks in several provinces. While some of them have been blamed on “lockdown fatigue” and younger Canadians loosening up their social circles, others show continuing issues in migrant worker camps and other close-quarters settings.
More than two-thirds of Canadians (69 percent) are still spending less on non-essential items like gifts or restaurant meals, according to a new study. The poll results, published Thursday, found a significant downward trend in non-essential spending, as Canadians continue to shun frivolous purchases in favour of groceries, gas, and other necessities. Sixty-five percent of Canadians earning less than $50,000 said they are in good financial shape compared to 89 percent among those earning $100,000 or more. Canadians receiving employment insurance or the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) are even more fragile, with 30 percent saying they are barely hanging on. The study found that three-in-10 Canadians have lost work due to COVID-19 – a number that has remained steady since May – and that 38 percent of those who have lost their jobs described their personal finances as bad or terrible.
“I think Canadians have made tremendous sacrifices and we’ve succeeded overall in flattening the curve, but that success is fragile and it only takes a few sparks and so on to backslide and create…the situation we don’t want,” said Deputy Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Howard Njoo at a press conference on Tuesday.
USD/CAD 4 Hour Chart:
Support: 1.3364 (S1), 1.3319 (S2), 1.3288 (S3).
Resistance: 1.3440 (R1), 1.3472 (R2), 1.3516 (R3).
The fear of the second wave of the virus in Canada suppresses CAD against the greenback. We expect a bullish trend for USD/CAD.
