The Province is providing $195M in funding in life sciences
Darpan News Desk The Canadian Press, 02 Mar, 2022 05:03 PM
The province is providing 195-million dollars in grant funding to help attract and retain top researchers in the life sciences field.
Jobs Minister Ravi Kahlon says Michael Smith Health Research B-C will get 116-million dollars while Genome BC will get the rest in order to spur innovation.
— Brenda Bailey, MLA (@BrendaBaileyBC) March 2, 2022
Kahlon says the province wants to leverage B-C's contributions to developing and manufacturing COVID-19 vaccines towards learning how to deal with future pandemics.
He says the funding could also help advance research in a range of areas including the development of new medications, rapid diagnostic tests for diseases and clean technology.Â
Experts and global health leaders say it's still too soon to tell whether the Omicron variant will significantly threaten immunity gained from current COVID-19 vaccines as calls grow in some corners for expanded booster shots.
The British Columbia government says it is immediately providing a grant of $1 million to support the Village of Lytton as it recovers from a destructive wildfire last summer. The fast-moving fire razed much of the Fraser Canyon community on June 30, just one day after the temperature there hit an all-time Canadian high of 49.6 Celsius.
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There are 2,874 active cases of COVID-19 in the province, and 215,884 people who tested positive have recovered. Of the active cases, 224 individuals are currently in hospital and 77 are in intensive care. The remaining people are recovering at home in self-isolation.
British Columbia's seniors advocate is calling for a provincewide approach for reporting seniors abuse amid complaints that are "significantly rising." Isobel Mackenzie says there is a clear five-year pattern of increasing reports of seniors abuse and neglect, but the fragmented reporting system suggests the problem could be more widespread.
Canada will join a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympics in Beijing next year, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Wednesday. The decision comes two days after the United States announced it would send government officials to the Olympics over concerns about China's human rights record.
Immigration Minister Sean Fraser says the government predicts it could take two years to fulfil its promise of bringing 40,000 Afghan refugees to Canada. The minister said the government is facing challenges in Afghanistan and other countries where refugees have fled but is trying to get them to Canada urgently.
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