Tag: Pandemic

More Than 200K Small Businesses Could Close Permanently Amid Pandemic: CFIB | Global News

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More than 200,000 Canadian small businesses could shut their doors permanently due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, jeopardizing close to three million private-sector jobs in the worst-case scenario, according to a recent survey by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB). The organization estimates 181,000 small entrepreneurs are seriously considering closing down their businesses after a spike in case counts prompted a new wave of government lockdowns and restrictions. Read full story here: More Than 200K Small Businesses Could Close Permanently Amid Pandemic: CFIB | Global News

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What Is Contact Tracing? Here’s What You Need To Know About How It Could Affect Your Privacy | CBC News

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For weeks, Canadians have been hearing public health officials talk about the importance of testing and tracing: Test to know who has COVID-19; trace to know who might be infected so you can test them, too. There have been significant efforts on both fronts to improve capacity. And part of that effort has taken contact tracing into the digital age. What does that involve and what does it mean for your privacy? Read full story here: What Is Contact Tracing? Here’s What You Need To Know About How It Could…

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Liberals Hasten High-Speed Broadband Access Plan In Response To Pandemic | CBC News

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As more Canadians find themselves living online while stuck at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Liberal government is accelerating its strategy to increase high-speed broadband coverage in rural Canada. A spokesperson for Rural Economic Development Minister Maryam Monsef said the government is consulting with telecommunication providers, rural municipalities and others about how best to move up plans to improve access to high-speed Internet in rural and remote communities. “The current crisis has reinforced the fact that high-speed Internet access is no longer a luxury,” said Marie-Pier Baril in a…

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Is Canada Bad At Sharing Public Data? COVID-19 Rekindles An Old Debate | CBC News

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A debate that normally resides in the realm of wonkery roared to public attention this week, with Ottawa’s reluctance to release projections of the pandemic death toll. Is Canada bad at sharing public data? It’s a recurring obsession of journalists and researchers who use government data about things like health care, economics, crime and housing. By now, Americans haven’t just seen fatality projections. They have a one-stop site with estimates for all 50 states of how many deaths there might be, how many hospital beds and ventilators might be required,…

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Google’s COVID-19 Location Data Shows Regions That Are Violating Lockdown Orders. | Engadget

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Google has unveiled the COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports in an effort to help public health officials understand how people are moving about in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The reports show location data from folks who have agreed to share their location history with Google in order to show places that are following instructions to shelter in place — or not. “As global communities respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an increasing emphasis on public health strategies, like social distancing measures, to slow the rate of transmission,” wrote…

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Broadband Speeds Fall In Dozens Of Big US Cities During Pandemic | Ars Technica

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Home-Internet download speeds have fallen during the COVID-19 pandemic in dozens of the biggest US cities as millions of Americans stay home due to school and business closures. However, typical download speeds remain high enough to support normal broadband-usage patterns, with the vast majority of cities still above the Federal Communications Commission’s 25Mbps standard. In 88 of the 200 most populous US cities, Internet users “experienced some degree of network degradation over the past week compared to the 10 weeks prior,” BroadbandNow said in a report released Wednesday. Of those,…

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How Will The Coronavirus End? | The Atlantic

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The U.S. may end up with the worst COVID-19 outbreak in the industrialized world. This is how it’s going to play out. Three months ago, no one knew that SARS-CoV-2 existed. Now the virus has spread to almost every country, infecting at least 446,000 people whom we know about, and many more whom we do not. It has crashed economies and broken health-care systems, filled hospitals and emptied public spaces. It has separated people from their workplaces and their friends. It has disrupted modern society on a scale that most…

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Coronavirus Pandemic Changes How Your Privacy Is Protected | CNET

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Data protection officials around the world are loosening rules on how your data can be used during the COVID-19 outbreak. Privacy protections around the world are getting lifted during the coronavirus outbreak. As the coronavirus pandemic gets worse, privacy commissioners are lifting data restrictions for health officials to keep track of the outbreak. A review of policy changes around the world shows that data protection agencies are prioritizing lives over privacy, and it could be a sign of what’s to come for the US. In Hong Kong, the city’s privacy…

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