As eager as much of the public, policymakers, politicians and the media seem to want to forget the pandemic, COVID-19 is still with us, writes André Picard.Marco Bello/Reuters
For a long time, it was accepted wisdom that respiratory viruses don’t spread easily in the summer. Colds, the flu, and other bugs that leave us coughing and sniffling do their dirty work in the winter.
But, among its many surprises, SARS-CoV-2 has laid that belief to rest.
Just ask Peter Dyrda. He has had COVID-19 three times – in the summers of 2021, 2023, and 2025, the latest a nasty bout in July.
“I felt like I had been hit by a truck,” Mr. Dyrda said. His symptoms included what has come to be known as “razor blade throat,” an intensely sore throat that makes it difficult to swallow.
He is not alone. There has been a slow but steady uptick in COVID cases throughout the summer. It’s a time when people travel, are sociable, and often huddle indoors where there is air-conditioning – all ideal conditions for a virus to spread. Not to mention that far fewer people are masking or getting vaccinated.
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As eager as much of the public, policymakers, politicians and the media seem to want to forget the pandemic – to the point where some governments, like the U.S., are aggressively shedding defences like vaccines – the coronavirus that burst onto the global health scene five years ago is still with us.
In the week ending Aug. 23, there were at least 1,092 confirmed COVID-19 cases across Canada, even though there is very little testing. The data are incomplete because not all jurisdictions report their numbers.
There were also 30 active outbreaks, largely in nursing homes and hospitals.
While cases, hospitalizations and deaths are down dramatically since the peak of the pandemic, the coronavirus continues to ravage.
In the past year, 2,315 COVID-19 deaths have been reported, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC). That’s a fraction of the numbers we’ve seen in past years – in 2022 alone, Canada recorded almost 20,000 deaths – but COVID-19 is still one of the top 15 causes of death in the country.
In the five years since the pandemic struck, we’ve become much better at treating symptoms and keeping people alive. Hospitals aren’t overwhelmed as they were at the height of the pandemic.
Still, there were 33,755 hospitalizations in the past year, including 469 patients in intensive care. Those numbers include 539 pediatric cases, including 83 kids in ICU. That’s a not insignificant burden on a hospital system that is already stretched to the limit.
Outbreaks also remain commonplace. There have been 5,816 COVID-19 outbreaks declared in the past year, 41 per cent in long-term care homes, 28 per cent in hospitals, and 19 per cent in retirement homes.
Bear in mind too that, in all these cases, the numbers are incomplete. For example, five provinces and territories don’t report laboratory-confirmed COVID cases to PHAC: B.C., Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Nova Scotia and the Northwest Territories.
The data are incomplete in a number of other ways too. Canada stopped calculating the cumulative death toll of COVID-19 on Sept. 21, 2024, when the official number stood at 60,871. The real number is undoubtedly higher, as there were many excess deaths, especially early in the pandemic.
Artifacts from the frenzied early days of the COVID pandemic
The same issue exists globally, where the official COVID death count is more than seven million, and researchers estimate actual mortality exceeds 20 million.
Dr. Joe Vipond, a Calgary ER doctor who is co-chair of the Canadian COVID Society, said the limited data we have in Canada nonetheless delivers an important message: We still aren’t doing enough to mitigate the spread of the virus.
“We need better air quality in our public spaces,” he said. “We need to be treating our air they way we treat our water, not just because of COVID but to prepare for the next airborne pandemic.”
It’s unthinkable to let unfiltered, untreated water flow in our taps, and it should be equally unthinkable to have unfiltered air circulate (along with airborne viruses) in places where vulnerable people gather in close proximity like nursing homes, hospitals, schools, community centres and such.
High efficiency particulate air filters can reduce transmission risks considerably. HEPA filters can be incorporated into air-conditioning and heating systems, or be stand-alone units.
“I’m a proponent of airborne mitigation,” Dr. Vipond said, noting that cleaning the air is doubly important because so few people mask any more.
Dr. Vipond said it’s unfortunate the way COVID-19 has fallen off the radar because there is still a lot of unfinished business when it comes to the virus. He is particularly miffed at the lack of action taken to mitigate the spread of infectious pathogens, including COVID-19, in schools. While young people don’t tend to get as sick as their elders, no one knows the long-term impact of repeated infections on the immune system.
Then there’s the elephant in the room, long COVID.
Somewhere between 2.1 million and 3.5 million Canadians have suffered from post-COVID condition (PCC), meaning they have long-term symptoms like fatigue and brain fog.
“Long COVID is where COVID gets very complicated,” said Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon.
She said there is no clear definition of long COVID, and it’s unclear how many people recover. In short, we don’t yet know the long-term impacts of infection, and repeated infections.
While it dominated the headlines for years, COVID-19 is still a new pathogen, and scientists are still trying to understand it, Dr. Rasmussen said.
COVID-19 has become endemic, meaning it is entrenched and here to stay. While the virus remains unpredictable, patterns are beginning to emerge.
Endemic doesn’t mean innocuous – or at least it shouldn’t. COVID still kills about as many people as the flu each year. And while flu virtually disappeared at the height of the pandemic, it has returned with a vengeance.
The good news is that the coronavirus and influenza viruses are very different from each other.
Flu viruses change constantly. They can jump from animals, usually pigs or chickens, and they can reassort – meaning different influenza viruses exchange whole genome sequences, creating new hybrids that have pandemic potential.
The best known, and most deadly flu pandemic, the “Spanish flu,” began in 1918. There were lesser global pandemics in 1957, 1968, and, most recently, the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. The biggest current worry is H5N1, which has devastated poultry stocks and wild birds around the world, and has recently infected some dairy cattle in the U.S. So far, however, there have been few cases in humans.
The coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, mutates too, but there is no reassortment, just variants that have a transmissibility advantage. Of the dozen or so COVID strains currently circulating, all are different flavours of Omicron.
But, based on patterns that have emerged over the past five years of the pandemic, a bigger surge can be expected in the fall.
“There a lot of COVID around now, and there’s going to be more when it gets colder, so people should get their shots,” Dr. Rasmussen.
She says the evidence that COVID-19 vaccines are worthwhile is incontrovertible. “They keep people from going to the morgue, or being hospitalized,” she said.
The shots lessen (but don’t entirely prevent) the risk of transmission, and reduce severity of illness, meaning fewer hospitalizations and deaths.
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But interest in vaccines is waning.
While 81 per cent of Canadians have had at least one COVID-19 vaccine, a measly 3.9 per cent of the population has been vaccinated as per the recommendations in the Canadian Immunization Guide. (That data does not include Alberta or Quebec.)
Health Canada recommends that everyone over 65 get vaccinated annually, as well as health care workers, individuals with underlying medical conditions, pregnant women, individuals in or from First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities, and members of racialized and other equity-denied communities.
Only 18.2 per cent of the population had received the most recent booster, known as XBB.1.5, as of June, 2024. (Health Canada has just approved the newest version, LP.8.1, produced both by Moderna and Pfizer.)
The vaccine is free, except in Alberta, where most residents will have to pay $100 out-of-pocket. The controversial move is part and parcel of the right-wing backlash against COVID mitigation measures, and vaccination more generally.
The U.S. federal government, driven by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s anti-vaccine views, has stopped recommending the COVID-19 vaccine, restricted access for those who still need it, and slashed funding on mRNA vaccines. Some believe it could pull COVID vaccines off the market entirely.
Florida, for its part, plans to eliminate all childhood vaccine mandates, an example of how bitterness over COVID-era restrictions is pushing government to a more laissez-faire approach.
It’s an approach scientists fear.
“I have nothing but contempt for what is going on in the U.S.,” Dr. Rasmussen said. “The policies are destructive. Limiting access to vaccines will cause people to die.”
Our response to COVID-19 has become a bellwether for our belief in vaccination, public health promotion and science more broadly.
And not showing the coronavirus the respect it deserves, with investments in airborne mitigation and vaccination among others, will only prolong our pandemic pain.