Quebec is announcing 118 new COVID-19 deaths compared with the prior day, for a total of 2,398. The province is also recording another 794 positive cases of COVID-19, for a total of 33,417 confirmed cases. Quebec Premier Francois Legault said today about 11,200 workers are absent from the health-care network, either because they are sick, vulnerable to COVID-19 infection or otherwise too afraid to go into work. He says about a third of them should be finishing their 14-day quarantines and is calling on them to return to work in the health-care network, especially in the province's struggling

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is promising a $252 million aid package for Canada's agriculture and food industries in the COVID-19 pandemic.He says $77 million of that will go to measures to keep workers in food processing safe with protective equipment and by supporting physical distancing in workplaces.Meat-packing plants, in particular, have seen large outbreaks of the virus that causes COVID-19.The package includes money for beef and pork producers holding animals they can't sell, a credit program for the dairy industry and a $50 million fund to buy food that spoils and send it to groups

There are 60,772 confirmed and presumptive cases in Canada. Quebec: 32,623 confirmed (including 2,280 deaths, 7,578 resolved) Ontario: 17,923 confirmed (including 1,300 deaths, 12,505 resolved) Alberta: 5,836 confirmed (including 104 deaths, 2,942 resolved) British Columbia: 2,224 confirmed (including 117 deaths, 1,417 resolved) Nova Scotia: 985 confirmed (including 38 deaths, 638 resolved) Saskatchewan: 467 confirmed (including 6 deaths, 307 resolved) Manitoba: 281 confirmed (including 6 deaths, 238 resolved) Newfoundland and Labrador: 259 confirmed (including 3 deaths, 233 resolved) New Bru

Canada's chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, says Canadians are going to need how to learn to live with COVID-19. She says that means even as things begin to reopen, people will have to keep practising physical distancing and cough etiquette, and stay home at the first sign of symptoms. Tam says working while sick can no longer be allowed.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says that when this is over he will order an audit of the government's response. Trudeau says the government will try to set up a plan to be better prepared for the next global pandemic, if one should take place. He says for now the government remains focused on getting through this time.

Air Canada's CEO is using the word cataclysmic to describe the damage the COVID-19 pandemic has done to the airline industry. The company lost more than one-billion-dollars in the first quarter. Calin Rovinescu is predicting it will take Air Canada at least three years to return to the flight capacity and earnings heights of last year, calling this the darkest period ever in the history of commercial aviation.

Ontario is reporting 370 new cases of COVID-19 today, and 84 more deaths. That brings the provincial total to nearly 18,000 cases, including 1,300 deaths and more than 12,500 resolved cases. The new provincial total is 2.1 per cent higher than the previous day, which is part of a downward trend.

Quebec is pushing back the reopening of retail stores in the greater Montreal area by one week, to May 18. Premier Francois Legault said today there are too many COVID-19 patients in Montreal's hospitals to safely open retail stores by the originally scheduled date. Legault says the construction and manufacturing sectors across Quebec will reopen, as scheduled, on May 11. Meanwhile, Quebec recorded another 75 COVID-19 deaths, for a total of 2,280, and the province announced 32,623 confirmed cases of the virus, an increase of 758 over the previous day.

World leaders are pledging billions of dollars for research into a vaccine against the new coronavirus.During a video conference of leaders this morning, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged $850 million to bolster international efforts to develop a COVID-19 vaccine and treatment, as well as to aid developing countries.UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres says the funding target of $11.5 billion to help find a vaccine, new treatments and better tests for the disease would be merely a downpayment on the tools that will be needed to fight the virus.