Health
Bruce Arthur: A COVID peak would be nice. But Ontario faces a winding, treacherous path back to health – Toronto.com
Maybe this is a peak. Not THE peak: we’ve been over peaks before, as the pandemic has rolled over two long years. But wastewater data analyzed by the province’s independent volunteer science table appears to be showing a plateau. There are other indications that we may be finding a limit on BA.2, the dominant variant in Ontario right now.
It would be good news. Not an end; not deus ex machina. Toronto’s 67-year-old mayor just tested positive, for goodness’ sakes, after a day of in-person appearances. But a peak would beat the alternative, because Ontario sure wasn’t going to do very much to stop the spread of the virus on its own.
And you can already see the road ahead: mission accomplished, off we go. We were already partway in that mind space, from the government on down. And while that might work on an individual level, regrettably, that’s not how communicable diseases work.
“We’d be foolish to think” this is over, says Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious diseases specialist at Toronto General and the University of Toronto. “While it’s wonderful that there’s arrows pointing in the right direction, that this wave may have crested, and while all waves come to an end and this one will as well, we still have to have a strong medium- and long-term vision.
“Because there will be more variants, there will be more waves, and we have to build resiliency in Ontario and of course elsewhere in Canada and really at a global level to to help protect us against future variants and future waves. Which are going to happen.”
Indeed. People will set their own individual risk level with little actual information — how fast does your personal immunity wane? — and for many, it’s defensible. And much of society seems to be snapping back to its default setting of not thinking about the vulnerable unless absolutely necessary. It would be harder to reinforce public health, plan wholesale booster campaigns to address waning immunity, create truly effective communication channels and strategic flexibility, any of that. A truly effective booster campaign would be accompanied by three-dose vaccination passports. And it would be easy to simply mandate masks in places where people like cancer patients or the immunocompromised have to go, like grocery stores or pharmacies.
But no, we’re probably going to veer toward pretending this is over.
“I think that if you’re the government, you’re quite happy about this, because the sky doesn’t appear to be falling and you don’t need to change direction,” says Dr. Andrew Morris, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Toronto and a member of the table, and the medical director of the Antimicrobial Stewardship Program at Sinai-University Health Network. “Right now you’ll have the blowhards of the world who say I told you this wasn’t a big deal and everything was going to be fine. And then you’ll have people who say I told you there’ll be tons of cases, and they’ll say that they were right.
“But there’s a huge amount of uncertainty. I think overall some of this is promising, but I think that this is still going to carry with it a fair amount of unnecessary deaths. We’re now entering the phase where to some degree, we just have no idea about the hidden pandemic. Right now the pandemic is increasingly becoming hidden from analysis, and it’s going to make it very difficult to sway government, because certainly in the next while, they’re not going to care.”
That uncertainty is reflected in the latest round of science table modelling Thursday, and the summary is easy: projections are much higher since masks were made voluntary, with median forecasts of 3,000 for a hospitalizations peak — the January Omicron wave set the record with over 4,000 — and 500 in the ICU.
The confidence ranges, however, are massive — ICU alone ranges from 250 to 1,000, which is two different universes. We can only see what’s coming in the crudest terms — wastewater going up, going down, holding fast, and whatever happens in the hospitals. Everything is anecdotal. Surgeries might be cancelled again, or not. Deaths and hospitalizations will rise some more before they stop, and Long COVID — which was detailed in the modelling, and remains the sleeping giant of this thing — is a lottery we’re all playing. But nothing will be done to slow this down.
“In both Denmark and the U.K. and other countries they’ve had this ongoing rise of deaths, and the person on the street doesn’t recognize it; they’re just saying, OK, that’s just how it is,” says Morris. “So people who are in the U.K. right now, unless they’re in the health-care system, they’re just saying this is how life is, and we’ve got freedoms and we’re gonna live our life, and if I’m boosted the risk to me is relatively low.”
A cresting of the wave, while unambiguously good news, would likely only accelerate that idea. And meanwhile, this wave isn’t over. Wastewater is a jumpy and imprecise measure, and there’s a holiday long weekend coming. Hospitalization and ICU numbers aren’t done rising. And as the science table noted, we’re already matching the peak of health-care worker infections right now.
A peak would be a relief, honestly. Maybe this is the start toward a fallow period, into summer with better weather and enough residual immunity, after a wave that plummets as quickly as it came. It would be nice. It would beat the alternative.
But this isn’t the last wave, or the last variant, no matter how much any of us would like to think it is. It’s not fun, but it’s true.
Bruce Arthur is a Toronto-based columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @bruce_arthur
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Alberta Health Services (AHS) has confirmed a case of measles in Edmonton, and is advising the public that the individual was out in public while infectious.
Measles is an extremely contagious disease that is spread easily through the air, and can only be prevented through immunization.
AHS says individuals who were in the following locations during the specified dates and times, may have been exposed to measles.
- April 16
- Edmonton International Airport, international arrivals and baggage claim area — between 3:20 p.m. and 6 p.m.
- April 20
- Stollery Children’s Hospital Emergency Department — between 5 a.m. to 3 p.m.
- April 22
- 66th Medical Clinic (13635 66 St NW Edmonton) — between 12:15 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
- Pharmacy 66 (13637 66 St NW Edmonton) — between 12:15 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
- April 23
- Stollery Children’s Hospital Emergency Department — between 4:40 a.m. to 9:33 a.m.
AHS says anyone who attended those locations during those times is at risk of developing measles if they’ve not had two documented doses of measles-containing vaccine.
Those who have not had two doses, who are pregnant, under one year of age, or have a weakened immune system are at greatest risk of getting measles and should contact Health Link at 1-877-720-0707.
Symptoms
Symptoms of measles include a fever of 38.3° C or higher, cough, runny nose, and/or red eyes, a red blotchy rash that appears three to seven days after fever starts, beginning behind the ears and on the face and spreading down the body and then to the arms and legs.
If you have any of these symptoms stay home and call Health Link.
In Alberta, measles vaccine is offered, free of charge, through Alberta’s publicly funded immunization program. Children in Alberta typically receive their first dose of measles vaccine at 12 months of age, and their second dose at 18 months of age.
Health
U.S. tightens rules for dairy cows a day after bird flu virus fragments found in pasteurized milk samples – Toronto Star
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Infected cows were already prohibited from being transported out of state, but that was based on the physical characteristics of the milk, which looks curdled when a cow is infected, or a cow has decreased lactation or low appetite, both symptoms of infection.
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Giant prehistoric salmon had tusk-like teeth for defence, building nests: study – CP24
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