People are shown outside a COVID-19 testing site in Montreal on Jan. 15, 2022.Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press
After two pandemic years that often felt infinite, who doesn’t want it to be over?
But the saga of COVID-19 and its variants is probably not over. The virus may be around for a long time. It may be around forever.
However, the continued presence of COVID-19 doesn’t have to mean that pandemic health restrictions go on forever. Nor does a future of “living with virus” mean wishing it away, or learning to shrug and accept big annual tallies of hospitalizations and deaths. Living with COVID means taking smart steps to make it livable.
We know what to do, and most Canadians have already done it: Nine out of 10 adults have at least two shots of vaccine. That’s put Canada in a good place. Our vaccination rate here is 16 percentage points higher than in the United States. Alberta, last among the provinces, would be the seventh-most vaccinated of the 50 states.
All this has made a huge difference. The virus killed three times as many Americans, as a percentage of the population, compared with Canada.
On Thursday, Ontario’s science table issued its latest modelling. As Ontario, like other provinces, removes the last of its public-health measures, including masks, the forecast suggests hospitalizations could climb, but will remain far below the peak of the Omicron wave. Spring and summer, with more people outside in the warmer weather, will help to keep infections and transmission down.
But the novel coronavirus is likely to return with a sequel in the fall, or sooner, including new variants with new twists. And if and when that happens, we know what to do. The key action is still vaccination.
Without vaccinations, the supposedly “mild” Omicron variant could have been catastrophic. Jabs made the difference. Omicron has killed more than 7,000 Canadians since Christmas. That’s less than the first wave, which saw about 9,000 deaths, or the worst wave, the second, in late 2020 and early 2021, when almost 13,000 people died. Omicron was exceptionally infectious, but thanks to the eagerness of Canadians to get vaccinated and boosted, the outcome was far less severe than it could have been.
Canada has a high vaccination rate. But we have to reach higher.
First, the good news. The most vulnerable have rolled up their sleeves. Among Canadians 80 years and older, 97 per cent have two shots and 84 per cent have three. For those age 70 to 79, 96 per cent have two shots and 83 per cent have three.
This is excellent. But there remain worrisome gaps.
Start with the unvaccinated. According to data as of March 6 from the Public Health Agency of Canada, about 2.4 million adults have received zero shots. The good news is the unvaccinated are mostly younger people, whose risks are lower. But Canada’s relatively high vaccination rate among the middle aged and seniors still leaves 20,000 people over the age of 80 who are unvaccinated, along with 80,000 people in their 70s, a quarter-million people in their 60s, and nearly half a million in their 50s. A fall wave as contagious as Omicron will put thousands of them in hospital. But the vast majority of those people would experience only mild symptoms if they were vaccinated.
And more Canadians need boosters. For example, of 4.5 million Canadians in their 60s who got two shots, nearly a million never got a booster. Among the fully vaxxed in their 70s, 420,000 did not get a booster. And 220,000 Canadians in their 80s never got boosted.
Among Canadian adults, just 56 per cent have had three shots, a low figure that is rising at a snail’s pace.
As governments dial back restrictions – and with the Omicron wave receding, dialling back makes sense – there hasn’t been enough emphasis on what got us here: vaccinations.
To ensure that today’s reopening is permanent, we have to be prepared for what nature may have in store for us.
We have to continue trying to vaccinate the unvaccinated – so they don’t become next fall’s wave of hospitalizations.
We have to be ready for the possible need for a massive booster campaign next fall – particularly among the most vulnerable, namely older Canadians.
And governments need to explain that the masks coming off today should be packed away in a drawer. They may have to make a temporary return – if and when another wave hits.
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