Health officials in Ontario said on Saturday that two confirmed cases of the new coronavirus variant first detected in the United Kingdom have appeared in the Canadian province. Several other countries, including Australia, Italy and the Netherlands say they detected cases of the new strain. Ontario reported 4,301 new cases over the past two days on Saturday, with the province seeing more than 2,000 cases per day for 12 consecutive days. Japan on Friday reported its first cases of a fast-spreading variant in passengers arriving from Britain. Canada has so far reported 541,616 cases of COVID-19, including 14,800 deaths.

Source: dna December 27, 2020 01:18 UTC