A falling dollar helps exporters—but not the rest of us Welcome to the Maclean's daily newsletter. As the coronavirus disrupts life in Canada, and Canadians get used to the notion of "social distancing" and "flattening the curve," Maclean's has expanded this newsletter to include everything you need to know about the global pandemic. You'll still find our best stories of the day at the bottom of the newsletter, but we'll also catch you up on news and notes from around the world. QUOTE OF THE DAY: “People will see some really stark figures”—Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who announced the province will release its modelling of the COVID-19 crisis on Friday The cumulative number of COVID-19 cases is now more than 11,000 in Canada, with deaths at 130. Worldwide, two sad milestones were passed: the number of cases topped one million while the death toll surpassed 50,000. Staff at grocery stores across Canada are complaining that customers are flouting physical distancing rules and turning what should be a once-a-week essential task into a social occasion to chat with others, often in close proximity to each other, CBC reports. They also say some customers get angry and abusive when staff attempt to enforce the store’s rules, including on distancing. As planting season approaches, Canadian farmers are worried that the migrant agricultural workers won’t arrive this year. Though they are legally allowed to enter Canada, a majority haven’t returned, the Globe and Mail reports. As the planting window is short, experts are concerned it could pose a threat to our domestic food supply. An agreement will allow passengers from two of Holland America’s cruise ships, the Zaandam and Rotterdam, to disembark in Florida. That includes healthy Canadian passengers, who will be taken directly to the airport to go home on chartered flights, a Broward County official announced. In recent days, four passengers of the Zaandam died of COVID-19 and at least nine tested positive. Ill passengers will be treated in Broward County. U.S. jobless claims soared to more than 6.6 million last week, while the previous week’s record number was revised upward to 3.3 million. In total, at least 10 million Americans lost their jobs in just two weeks, according to those preliminary statistics. As Georgia became one of the latest states to introduce stay-at-home measures, its governor, Brain Kemp, said that he’d only learned in the previous 24 hours that people infected with COVID-19 but not exhibiting symptoms “could have been infecting people before they even felt bad.” “When I was a child in the 1940s, my mother would cut up slices of fruit for me (there wasn't much) and as she put it in front of me she would say, ‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away,’ wrote actor Sir Patrick Stewart (a.k.a. Jean-Luc Picard of Star Trek fame). “How about, ‘A sonnet a day keeps the doctor away?’ ” He’s posting his daily Shakespearean readings on his social media feeds, including Twitter. As of April 1, he’d done 13. —Patricia Treble As of the latest update, this is the number of confirmed cases in Canada. We're updating this chart every day.
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