December 8, 2020

December 8th is the 343rd day of the year. There are 23 days remaining until the end of the year.

The first shipments of COVID-19 vaccines could be arriving in Canada before the end of the year.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced early delivery of 249,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine candidate is expected sometime next week, pending Health Canada approval.

In total, the Canadian government has ordered up to 76 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, which requires two doses per person, to be taken two weeks apart.

Also on Monday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced that the vaccine will first go to…
• Residents, staff, essential caregivers & other employees of congregate living settings;
• HealthCare workers;
• Adults in First Nations, Metis & Inuit communities; and
• Adult recipients of chronic home health care.

Eleven new COVID19 cases reported Monday by the C-K Public Health Unit.

Eleven new cases include four in schools. There are 35 active cases in Chatham-Kent, after a handful of recoveries over the weekend.

Ontario is reporting a record-high in new cases for the third straight day, surpassing the previous high by a single case. 1,924 new cases were revealed Monday. Majority of the cases still coming from Toronto, Peel, York and Durham.

Breakdancing or “breaking”, as it will be called, is going to be an Olympic sport starting at the 2024 Summer Games in Paris.

It joins climbing, skateboarding, and surfing, which will all debut next summer at the Tokyo games.

The International Olympic Committee is adding these types of sports to make the Summer Games, “more gender-balanced, more youthful, and more urban.”

Breaking will make its Olympic Games debut, building on the success of the sport at the Youth Olympic Games Buenos Aires 2018.pic.twitter.com/ZthK3ZRxIv

— Olympics (@Olympics) December 7, 2020

Google Maps is rolling out new features.

Community feed within the app: With this new feature, users will be able to access the latest reviews, photos and posts added to Maps by people they follow.

Messaging for Maps and Search: Verified companies can message customers directly from the app, allowing searchers to interact with businesses and ask questions.

Street View images added by users: Users will be able to submit their own Street View images from their phones. People can do this by recording a series of connected images while they move down a street or path.

Google has added nearly 250 new features and improvements to its Maps application since the pandemic began and makes over 50 million updates to the app daily.

Google Maps was released in 2005.

Ikea is going to stop printing its famous catalog after 70 years. They print around 200 million copies a year.

The Swedish furniture giant said the decision is part of an ongoing transformation toward digital operations, which reaches consumers where they shop.

Ikea said online retail sales were up 41.9 percent last year, with more than 178.5 million visits to its website.

Ikea says its first catalogue was published in 1951 in Sweden, with the first digital version in 2000.

Categorised in: 5 Things You Need To Know

This post was written by Chris McLeod