Health

VICTORIA — Sensitive personal health records of British Columbia residents, from mental health to sexually transmitted disease histories, are "disturbingly" vulnerable to leaks, the provincial privacy watchdog says.

HALIFAX — The planned redevelopment of a sprawling Halifax hospital complex is being reworked to add hundreds more beds and new facilities, the Nova Scotia government announced Thursday.

WHITINGHAM, Vt.

TORONTO — The Ontario government is expanding eligibility for the COVID-19 bivalent booster vaccine to children aged five to 11. The province says kids in that age group will be eligible for a bivalent dose starting Dec. 21.

BEIJING (AP) — A week after China dramatically eased some of the world's strictest COVID-19 containment measures, uncertainty remained Thursday over the direction of the pandemic in the world's most populous nation.

LONDON (AP) — Thousands of nurses walked off their jobs in England on Thursday, escalating a wave of industrial unrest in the U.K.

HONG KONG (AP) — The company that assembles Apple Inc.’s iPhones has announced it is easing COVID-19 restrictions at its largest factory in China that led thousands of workers to quit and drastically slowed production.

A study from the C.D. Howe Institute estimates Canada would have lost $156 billion in economic activity in 2021 had COVID-19 vaccines been rolled out six months later than they were. That would have been equivalent to about 12.

BEIJING (AP) — China said Wednesday that it would stop reporting asymptomatic COVID-19 cases since they've become impossible to track with mass testing no longer required, another step in the country's departure from some of the world's strictest ant

U.S. health officials have revised a tool to track the rising cases of severe obesity among children who were previously off the charts.