With every measure available – hospitalization, officially confirmed cases and the presence of the virus in sewage – Ontario’s latest wave of COVID-19 infections is growing exponentially. Estimates of the number of viruses in sewage indicate that approximately 100,000 people are now infected daily in Ontario, according to the Scientific Advisory Board for COVID-19. This is a faster rate of infection than ever before in a pandemic. All of this leaves no doubt that Ontario is in a sixth wave, although the province’s Director of Medical Health, Dr. Kieran Moore has not yet officially stated it. Moore has not given a press conference or media interview for the past four weeks, despite repeated requests from a number of media outlets, including CBC News.
Still, much remains unknown about the sixth wave of Ontario: What kind of impact is it? How much bigger will it become? What should the province do about it? The Ford Government’s approach to this last question right now is to stay on track after most of the COVID-19 measures were lifted last month. The Chief Medical Officer of Ontario, Dr. Kieran Moore, has not held a press conference or media interview since March 8. (Evan Mitsui / CBC)
“There is no reason to panic,” Ontario Health Minister Christine Eliot said Wednesday when asked about the state of COVID-19 in an irrelevant press conference. “This is something we are sure we will be able to overcome.” In the same press conference, Ford was asked if he was downplaying the importance of the current wave for political reasons, with the Ontario election campaign starting in four weeks. “I do not downplay it,” Ford replied. “But let’s put it in perspective. We still have one of the lowest per capita cases in the country.” Ford and Elliott have repeatedly aimed to reassure Ontar residents that hospital bed capacity, high vaccination rates and the availability of antiviral drugs mean the county health system can cope with the current surge.

“This pandemic is not over”

It’s an unsolicited message to those who believe that “hospitals are not over” is a low-key success, including Dr. Amit Arya, a palliative care physician who works in hospitals and long-term care homes in the Toronto area “Simply ignoring COVID-19 and pretending it does not exist and abandoning all public health protection measures is the wrong message right now,” Arya said in an interview. A crowd heads to the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto for a Justin Bieber concert on March 25, just days after the Ontario government lifted mandatory coverage rules in most of the county. (Evan Mitsui / CBC)
“A lot of people, including some of my friends and family, believe this message and somehow interpret it to say the pandemic is over,” Arya added. Anthony Dale, president of the Ontario Hospitals Association, says Eliot’s call not to panic is appropriate, but adds a warning. “Panic does not solve anything. But saying ‘Do not panic’ does not mean ‘Look away.’ “There is absolutely nothing to see here, everything is fine,” Dale said in an interview. “Our number one message is that this pandemic is not over.” The county reported 1,074 patients in hospital with COVID-19 on Wednesday, a jump of 36 percent in one week. If we look beyond this current number, what concerns many health professionals is the number of patients who will come, especially given the high number of cases. “We are going in the wrong direction,” said infectious disease specialist Dr. Isaac Bogoch in an interview on Wednesday.
“There is widespread COVID in the community and that makes it easier [for the virus] “We need to find vulnerable people and populations at risk, which means we will see more hospitalizations,” Bogoch said. Ontario has extended its plan to distribute free COVID-19 rapid test kits by the end of July. The province only allows a limited portion of the population to be fully tested for COVID-19 in a laboratory. (Paul Smith / CBC)
Throughout the pandemic, experts have sought to make it clear that hospitality statistics are what is called the “delay rate” of COVID-19 cases: the severity of the trend becomes apparent only a few weeks after the onset of infections. . Some of the 100,000 people infected every day will now end up in hospital later this month and some of them will die. Meanwhile, many hospitals are beginning to face staff challenges as healthcare workers call in sick because they or a family member has been infected with COVID-19. Doctors question Ford’s insistence that the province can easily handle the increase in patients by adding more bed capacity.

“Head-to-head approach to the sand”

“Healthcare workers are getting COVID-19 at a rate in Ontario that has never seen this pandemic. We can not staff extra beds in hospitals,” Dr. Lisa Salamon, an emergency physician, wrote on Twitter this week. Scarborough. He added that many of the cases involved health workers who have been infected by their children, bringing the new coronavirus home from school. Dr. David Fisman, a physician and epidemiologist at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, says the county is taking a “head-to-toe approach” to the current tide and “encouraging people to actually spread the disease.” “It’s particularly worrying because these waves are hitting young children in a way that is disproportionate to what happened earlier in the pandemic,” Fisman told CBC News in an email.
“Rejecting precautions just when a wave starts is a very bad move and it will cost us all,” said Dr. Kashif Pirzada, an emergency physician in Toronto. He is the co-founder of a group called Masks4Canada that campaigned to make public coverage mandatory at the beginning of the pandemic. (Dr. Kashif Pirzada)
The government’s decision to end mandatory mask rules in mid-March at most indoor locations, including schools, was accompanied by a change in message. Moore, Ford and Elliot began to describe the mask as a personal choice for those at higher risk. This leads to the idea that people should wear masks in public places indoors to prevent the spread of COVID-19 to others.

“We all have to wear masks”

Ford and Elliott have repeatedly said no to re-enforcing the mask, saying Dr. Moore does not recommend it. Quebec, on the other hand, extended mandatory coverage rules this week until the end of April. “We should all go back to using masks,” said Dr. Mustafa Hirji, a Niagara-area health doctor. “It will definitely be much harder to get people back in the mask after they stop.”
With all this, how bad will the sixth wave become? “I do not think it is a given that this wave will necessarily be less bad than the previous wave,” Hirji said. “It’s not a guaranteed result and I do not think we should do it banking.”
Dr. Kashif Pirzada, a Toronto emergency physician, said he hoped the vaccine protection and the arrival of the best weather would work for Ontario. “Fingers crossed, it will be okay,” Pirzada said in an interview. “But in general, rejecting precautions just when a wave starts was a very bad move and will cost us all, unfortunately.”