The latest COVID-19 modelling data shows variant strains of the novel coronavirus are spreading in Ontario and could lead to a third wave of the pandemic in a month’s time.
Dr. David Williams, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, and Dr. Adalsteinn Brown, co-chair of the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table, presenting the latest data this afternoon.
“Still precarious,” is how Williams described the situation in Ontario today.
If the spread of the new variants of concern (VOC), particularly B.1.1.7, can’t be minimized, he said, cases could start climbing dramatically by around the middle of March.
Data shows the new variants spread more easily and “there is some evidence it may also be more lethal,” Brown said today.
“If the B.1.1.7 strain behaves as it did in the United Kingdom cases will start to grow here again in late February or early March, that is unless we can limit the spread through public health measures,” Brown said.
In a matter of months, the B.1.1.7 strain went from being detected to being the dominant strain in the UK and cases more than tripled in a month. The workload of frontline health-care workers increased between four and eight times, and there were daily death rates in excess of a 1,000 people.
As well, Brown said, if other VOC spread throughout Ontario as well, it will exacerbate the situation.
At the moment, the VOC account for between five and ten per cent of all cases.
“Without the ability to respond quickly and effectively, without the ability to control spread in the community, we face the very real risk of a third wave and eventually, a third lockdown,” Brown said. “There will be little time to react quickly, because of how fast the variants spread.”
There are currently 239 known cases of the VOC, though both men said there are certainly more cases than that.
Fortunately, both men said, the same public health measures that limit the spread of the original strain are effective against the new one.
One of Ontario’s challenges (despite ongoing issues with vaccine supply), both Brown and Williams said, is the province’s Rₑ. This indicates the effective reproduction number of the virus — basically the number of people who can be infected by a single person at any specific time. The higher that number, the more people each individual person can transmit the virus to.
Both Brown and Williams said Ontario’s Rₑ has never been below 0.8 and has been as high as 0.9. However, to prevent an increase in total cases, the Rₑ must be below 0.7.
The message, Williams added, is even as most regions of Ontario move out of lockdown next week, the public cannot slack on continuing to follow public health measures of social distancing, wearing a mask and limiting all unnecessary travel and unsafe interactions with others.
“Stay home and if you have to go out, stay local,” Williams said.
Further, Public Health Ontario continues to advise against travelling between regions of the province, or outside the province and certainly discourage international travel.
Overall, there is evidence of declining mobility of the virus, cases, new cases and hospitalizations. Deaths in long-term care facilities are falling.
Rates of intensive-care unit occupancy, however, have remained steady; they aren’t growing but they aren’t falling either.
While the focus has been on LTCs, Brown said more ICU cases are arising outside of long-term care settings and more in a wide demographic from those aged 40 to 80.
In terms of other metrics, testing rates are still up, with more than 68,000 people being tested today, while the positivity rate of those tests has fallen to 2.3 per cent, the lowest since Oct. 17, 2020. All positive test samples are also being tested for VOC.
In terms of vaccination, officials are anxiously awaiting vaccine shipments to ramp back up again and say they’re ready to go when shipments arrive. There have been very few adverse reactions to the vaccines, Williams said.
Of the 380,000 vaccines given up to the date of the report he was reading from (the number of vaccinated people is higher now), there have been 287 adverse events, 283 of which were considered not serious. Of the four serious events, two were allergic reactions, one reaction there is no data for and one person suffered renal injury. All recovered
