People wait outside a COVID-19 assessment centre, in Scarborough, Ont., on Dec. 2, 2020.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
Experts advising the Ontario government say the province needs to be very careful with loosening public health measures as a risky period of the pandemic lies ahead.
The province’s science advisory group says more infectious variants of COVID-19 will likely make up 40 per cent of cases by the second week of March.
The group says declines in cases and hospitalizations that followed strict lockdown measures have begun to slow.
Projections show hospitalizations will likely rise as variants spread, and intensive care capacity will be strained over the next month.
The group says vaccinating high-risk communities and older people will drive down hospitalizations and deaths.
COVID-19 is caused by a virus called SARS-CoV-2, and as it spread around the world, it mutated into new forms that are more quickly and easily transmitted through small water droplets in the air. Canadian health officials are most worried about variants that can slip past human immune systems because of a different shape in the spiky protein that latches onto our cells. The bigger fear is that future mutations could be vaccine-resistant, which would make it necessary to tweak existing drugs or develop a new “multivalent” vaccine that works against many types, which could take months or years.
Not all variants are considered equal threats: Only those proven to be more contagious or resistant to physical-distancing measures are considered by the World Health Organization to be “variants of concern.” Five of these been found in Canada so far. The WHO refers to them by a sequence of letters and numbers known as Pango nomenclature, but in May of 2021, it also assigned them Greek letters that experts felt would be easier to remember.
ALPHA (B.1.1.7)
- Country of origin: Britain
- Traits: Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are still mostly effective against it, studies suggest, but for full protection, the booster is essential: With only a first dose, the effectiveness is only about 66 per cent.
- Spread in Canada: First detected in Ontario’s Durham Region in December. It is now Canada’s most common variant type. Every province has had at least one case; Ontario, Quebec and the western provinces have had thousands.
BETA (B.1.351)
- Country of origin: South Africa
- Traits: Some vaccines (including Pfizer’s and Oxford-AstraZeneca’s) appear to be less effective but researchers are still trying to learn more and make sure future versions of their drugs can be modified to fight it.
- Spread in Canada: First case recorded in Mississauga in February. All but a few provinces have had at least one case, but nowhere near as many as B.1.1.7.
GAMMA (P.1)
- Country of origin: Brazil
- Traits: Potentially able to reinfect people who’ve recovered from COVID-19.
- Spread in Canada: B.C. has had hundreds of cases, the largest known concentration of P.1 outside Brazil. More outbreaks have been detected in Ontario and the Prairies.
DELTA (B.1.617 AND B.1.617.2)
- Country of origin: India
- Traits: Spreads more easily. Single-dosed people are less protected against it than those with both vaccine doses.
- Spread in Canada: All but a few provinces have recorded cases, but B.C.’s total has been the largest so far.
LAMBDA (C.37)
- Country of origin: Peru
- Traits: Spreads more easily. Health officials had been monitoring it since last August, but the WHO only designated it a variant of concern in June of 2021.
- Spread in Canada: A handful of travel-related cases were first detected in early July.
If I’m sick, how do I know whether I have a variant?
Health officials need to genetically sequence test samples to see whether it’s the regular virus or a variant, and not everyone’s sample will get screened. It’s safe to assume that, whatever the official variant tallies are in your province, the real numbers are higher. But for your purposes, it doesn’t matter whether you contract a variant or not: Act as though you’re highly contagious, and that you have been since before your symptoms appeared (remember, COVID-19 can be spread asymptomatically). Self-isolate for two weeks. If you have the COVID Alert app, use it to report your test result so others who may have been exposed to you will know to take precautions.
Need more answers? Email audience@globeandmail.com
It also says the province will need to react quickly with strong public health measures when flare-ups happen.
Meanwhile, Ontario is reporting 1,138 new cases of COVID-19 today and 23 more deaths linked to the virus.
Health Minister Christine Elliott says there are 339 new cases in Toronto, 204 in Peel Region and 106 in York Region.
Ontario says 1,094 cases were resolved since Wednesday’s report.
Today’s data is based on nearly 66,400 tests.
Another 19,112 doses of a COVID-19 vaccine were given since the last daily update.
A total of 621,960 vaccine doses have been administered in the province.
There have been 297,311 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Ontario since the pandemic began, 280,324 of which have been resolved and 6,916 were fatal.
Toronto, Peel Region and North Bay, Ont., remain under a stay-at-home order but the province recently loosened restrictions for all other regions.
Canada's chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, says results from COVID-19 vaccinations so far are encouraging enough that she thinks the need for massive lockdowns could be over before the end of the summer. But Tam says some of the more personal measures, like wearing masks and limiting close contact outside our households, may be with us longer.
The Canadian Press
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