October 18, 2021

October 18th is the 291st day of 2021. There are 74 days remaining until the end of the year.

Ontario’s Vaccine Certificates QR codes are now available to download through the Ontario Online Portal.

As of 6am this morning any individual in the province is eligible to download theirs.

It will also be available to print off for those who do not have a smartphone.

To download your QR code, click here.

In advance of October 22, the Ontario government is making the enhanced vaccine certificate with official QR code available for download, making it easier to provide proof of vaccination in select settings. https://t.co/aiQW22Uwm3 pic.twitter.com/Nxr2aHyKMu

— Ontario Ministry of Health (@ONThealth) October 15, 2021

On Sunday Ontario reported 443 new cases of COVID-19; That’s a full week of under 500 new cases per day.

Chatham-Kent Public Health doesn’t update on the weekends or holidays. On Friday, there were 10 new cases and ten recoveries. The active case count locally is at 68. A weekend update will come between 10-11 this morning.

The Canadian Government is preparing for a rush on passport renewals.

Usually people can expect to get their passports about 20 days after they apply at Service Canada, but some people report waits of just over a month.

Urgent passport services have been available throughout the pandemic, but with borders closed and public health measures in place most people had little use for them.

Service Canada issued more than 2.3-million passports the year before the pandemic began, but handed out only 363,225 the year after that. Demand is already climbing, with 467,541 passports issued this year as of the end of September.

The U-S border is set to reopen to vaccinated travelers on November 8th.

Terry Fox will be honoured on a 8 storey building in Toronto.

Five Toronto street, mural and graffiti artists have been asked to come up with an eight storey landmark mural that will be painted on the north side of University of Toronto’s Rehabilitation Sciences Building.

University Avenue was among the routes taken by Fox when his marathon arrived in Toronto on July 11, 1980 before ending up at Nathan Philips Square

The winning piece will be painted next summer.

Netflix announced this week that the Korea-made Squid Game is the biggest-ever series at launch.

Netflix reports that the series has been viewed by more than 111 million accounts since it debuted on September 17th. For comparison, Bridgerton, which previously had the top spot, was viewed by 82 million accounts in its first 28 days.

The series is the first ever from Korea to reach No. 1 status in North America.

Categorised in: 5 Things You Need To Know

This post was written by Chris McLeod