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For the first time since the pandemic began, Canada has passed a grim milestone, with more new Covid-19 cases per capita than the U.S. There have been roughly 22 new recorded cases per 100,000 people in the country over the past 7-days. Ontario is being hit the hardest with hospitals coming under increasing strain, especially in Toronto, the country’s largest city. “This is the worst moment of the pandemic, thus far,” Kevin Smith, Chief Executive Officer of the University Health Network, said in an interview Monday. “Our ICUs are full.” (Bochove and Hertzberg, 4/12)

Hospitals in Canada’s most populous province are canceling surgeries, transferring patients and preparing for the possible need to ration care as they face a surge in Covid-19 variants that is putting more pressure on Ontario’s healthcare system than at any other time in recent history. As of Monday, the number of adult Covid-19 patients in intensive-care-unit beds had risen 44% from the beginning of the month to reach 623, according to data compiled by Critical Care Services Ontario. About two-thirds of those patients were on ventilators. Previously, the number of Covid-19 patients in critical-care beds had peaked at 415 in mid-January. (Mackrael and Vieira, 4/13)

Latin America reported more Covid-19 cases and deaths than at any time since the pandemic started in the seven days through Sunday, as new variants rip through the region. Most of those cases and deaths are in Brazil, which has the region’s biggest population but also its deadliest outbreak on a per capita basis. The P.1 variant, first spotted in the Amazon city of Manaus in December, has pushed the health system to breaking point and is spreading beyond Brazil’s borders. Uruguay, which came through the first wave of the virus relatively unscathed, reported more than 1,000 cases per million inhabitants in the past week. That’s the most in the world. (Boyd, 4/13)

The ability of scientists to successfully adapt Covid-19 vaccines for use against coronavirus variants of concern will turn in part on the ability to spot infectious mutations in the virus’s genetic makeup quickly. For that, a computer that comprehends human language may help. (Browdie, 4/14)