Peter Jüni commented in an interview with CP24 on Wednesday afternoon as he discussed the resurgence of COVID activity, which has now seen the number of people being treated for the virus increase by 40 percent from week to week. .
“Based on our sewage analysis, as soon as we reached the peak we were in early January and at that time, we were about 100,000 to 120,000 new cases a day,” he said.  “What it basically means is that about 5 percent of Ontario currently has an active infection.”
Jüni told CP24 last week that the actual number of daily infections in the province was probably 35,000 to 40,000, but since then, positivity rates have risen and sewage surveillance has shown even higher levels of COVID-19 in the community.
He told CP24 that while the more contagious BA.2 variant drives some of the resurgence, it is not the primary factor behind the increase in transmission.
He said the behavioral changes caused by the removal of mask commands for most settings actually help increase the case load than expected when the science fiction panel released its latest modeling forecast three weeks ago.
At the time, he said hospitalizations were likely to increase to about 800 by May.
But as of Wednesday morning, there were 1,074 people in Ontario hospitals with COVID-19, with pressure on the healthcare system showing no signs of easing any time soon.
“BA.2 is definitely a bit more contagious than the original Omicron, but what we’re doing, and that’s in line with provincial communication, people have just changed their behavior dramatically,” Jüni said.  “Therefore, it does not correspond to what we assumed in our last predictions when we assumed a modest change in behavior.”
Prime Minister Doug Ford insisted that the rise in COVID-19 activity was not unexpected given the lifting of many restrictions on public health, and expressed confidence that Ontario hospitals would be able to handle the growing number of patients.
Some epidemiologists, however, have warned that a rapid increase in transmission could put vulnerable people at risk and ultimately lead to preventable deaths.
They also wondered if there were enough health care resources to staff the extra beds the province claimed to have created.
“Mask.  We have not gone through this yet.  This wave will go high.  “It does not necessarily mean we will see the same number of treatments, at least not if we have the same level of infection, but remember that we are still going up and we are already at the peak we were at last,” Jüni warned.  Wednesday.