Ontario hiring more contact tracers

Canada's most populous province has announced plans to beef up its contact tracing as it recorded a nine per cent increase in new daily COVID-19 cases and five more deaths from the virus.

Ontario says it has hired 100 more people to help track and isolate new cases of the novel coronavirus and plans to hire 500 more by mid-November.

The province reported 783 new COVID-19 infections, up from 721 a day earlier.

It says it completed nearly 40,000 tests on Wednesday.

Quebec, meanwhile, is reporting 969 new COVID-19 cases and eight more deaths in the past 24 hours. There were 844 new cases recorded the previous day.

Health officials in the provinces reported another 22 deaths that they say occurred at earlier dates.

Also Thursday, a new study published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research suggests governments and corporations are shifting the responsibility for managing the pandemic onto individuals.

A team of three Canadian researchers found that in the early days, governments and companies took decisive action to mitigate the risk of spreading COVID-19.

But as the pandemic wore on, messaging shifted to urging consumers to follow guidelines such as physical distancing and mask use.