Canada's national budget watchdog says expanding and upgrading the country’s long-term care system would come with a hefty price tag.

“A fully vaccinated individual is much, much, much less likely to be represented in health care, is much less likely to be represented as a fatality, or an ICU,” said Dr. Zain Chagla, an infectious disease specialist at St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton.

There are ways to improve Canada's early pandemic alert and response systems, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says, but he also insists the country's top public health officials did start building a national response to COVID-19 very early on.

Chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam says the latest variant of interest in the COVID-19 pandemic has popped up in Canada in small numbers, but it's too early to know how widespread it is or what impact it could have.

A new review by the Public Health Agency of Canada says more than half of COVID-19 patients might suffer from post-COVID syndrome for more than three months after testing positive.

A fourth wave of COVID-19 now surging across the United Kingdom doesn't have to become a reality in Canada as long as people keep getting vaccinated as quickly as possible, some infectious disease experts say.

Health Canada's latest weekly report on vaccinations shows at least 1.3 million Canadians opted for a mixed-dose finish to their COVID-19 vaccination schedule in June.

A vaccine study in the United Kingdom reports that getting a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine four weeks after a dose of Oxford-AstraZeneca produced a much stronger immune response than two doses of AstraZeneca.

Chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam says she'll soon have advice to help fully vaccinated Canadians figure out what they can safely do, but it won't be a blanket list of dos and don'ts covering everyone, everywhere.