The rapid spread of more contagious coronavirus variants across Canada has led some hard-hit regions to question whether national public health guidelines go far enough to protect Canadians — and they’re sounding the alarm over the dangers of just minutes of exposure.
Despite acknowledging the emergence of variants threaten to “rapidly accelerate” the spread of COVID-19, the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) has not made any updates to its guidance for the public.
Canadians continue to be told to stay at home as much as possible and follow basic public health guidelines such as mask-wearing, physical distancing and handwashing — but at a local level, regions facing rising variant cases are going even further.
In York Region, just north of Toronto, public health officials made headlines this week after releasing startling new information on individuals infected with the variant first identified in the U.K. that seemed to call into question federal guidelines.
“Those cases were quite careful in many instances but seem to have the variant of concern nevertheless,” Medical Officer of Health for York Region Dr. Karim Kurji said in a statement to CBC News.
“Some of these people who caught it were just doing essential visits and not for very much time, just a minute or two.”
WATCH | What do variants change about the approach to COVID-19?
An infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist answer questions about COVID-19 variants including if people need to adapt precautions and how they affect testing. 5:55
York Region has seen a dramatic rise in the number of confirmed cases of the variant, also known as B117, with at least 39 to date.
It’s also stepped up efforts to control the spread of variants by opening isolation centres and lowering its thresholds for risk.
Kurji said York Region has had a more “conservative” definition of a close contact throughout the pandemic than other areas, describing it as just 10 minutes of interaction within two metres as opposed to the federal government’s 15-minute rule.
“At the very beginning of the pandemic, these guidelines were not very clear,” he said. “So we established this rule and we have stuck with that.”
Public Health Ontario (PHO), an arm’s-length provincial government agency, also recently told health units across the province they should reduce their thresholds for classifying all COVID-19 exposures because of the emergence of variants.
If a person infected with COVID-19 and a contact are both wearing masks, but the contact isn’t wearing eye protection, PHO said they should be considered “high-risk” if they were within two metres for at least 15 minutes.
If neither of them is wearing a mask or eye protection — PHO said any amount of exposure time is risky, aside from briefly passing by each other.
And if the contact isn’t wearing a mask but the infected case is, even if it’s a high quality medical mask, the risk of exposure is large no matter what.
It’s a far cry from the federal government regulations that still recommend non-medical masks and define exposures in the COVID Alert app as 15 minutes within two metres. And the competing advice from different public health officials no doubt leaves Canadians confused as to what they should be doing to protect themselves.
What should we do differently?
Experts say much like local public health units that are reassessing guidelines in light of the variants, Canadians should be rethinking risk based on the situation in their communities.
“I think in this case the local health units have it right in the sense that you want to have an abundance of caution,” said Ashleigh Tuite, an infectious diseases epidemiologist and assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health.
“We know that we have a more transmissible variant that’s circulating, we’re still trying to figure out exactly what that means. We continue to hear that the precautions that have worked with the regular version of [the coronavirus] still work — but we may need to do them better.”
Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam puts on a mask at a news conference on Nov. 6, 2020. The Public Health Agency of Canada has resisted recommending the use of medical masks to lower risk of exposure, despite calls from experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci to up our mask game whenever possible. (Patrick Doyle/Reuters)
Tuite said the 15-minute exposure time and two-metre distance rules are “arbitrary,” and erring on the side of caution makes sense even in areas without widespread variants.
“The new variants I think provide us with a reason to reevaluate those rules and I think that’s something that hasn’t necessarily been well communicated to the public,” she said.
“There’s nothing magical about that distance that was based on science, that’s based on sort of what we know about how airborne pathogens are spread. But I think the science has evolved, or at least our thinking has evolved.”
The federal agency has also resisted recommending the use of medical masks to lower risk of exposure, despite calls from experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci to up our mask game whenever possible.
Tuite said it’s “unhelpful” for PHAC to tell Canadians who may not be closely following the science that variants are more transmissible than previous strains, but also not instruct them to do anything differently.
“When you look at Canada’s response as a whole, clearly, there are many, many different things that we should be doing better,” said Dr. Leyla Asadi, an infectious diseases physician at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.
“We should be having better public health restrictions in place, we should be having better public health messaging, we should be using more rapid tests, we should have more paid sick leave and wraparound services — all of those things.”
A laboratory technologist at the B.C. Centre for Disease Control holds a genome cartridge while performing genomic sequencing of the the SARS-CoV-2 virus. (Ben Nelms/CBC)
Asadi said the reason Canada is doing so “poorly” in these areas, is simply because we’re not being “aggressive enough” in our response.
“I think people fundamentally would appreciate having strong leadership from federal public health authorities,” she said.
“I don’t think the science has necessarily changed. We don’t need new science I don’t think, I think we know these things already. We just need to make sure that it’s not just the people on Twitter and the health authorities that know it.”
Federal response
Federal health authorities said during a technical briefing Tuesday there were no plans to update current public health guidelines due to variants, but that could change as more information becomes available.
“The state of the science and our understanding of these variants is continuously growing,” said Dr. Guillaume Poliquin, head of the federal National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg.
“As data becomes available, public health decision-makers review the data and will re-evaluate any public health decisions based on data.”
WATCH | Alberta aims to reduce risk of new variant spread by adjusting quarantine rules:
By introducing the possibility of quarantine periods of up to 24 days for people who’ve been exposed to someone infected by COVID-19, the province of Alberta expects to reduce the risk posed by the arrival of coronavirus variants, says respirologist Dr. Samir Gupta. 2:04
Asadi said the average Canadian who may still be wearing a cloth mask and thinking two metres of distance is sufficient, may not be getting the information they need to avoid risk of exposure.
“It makes me sad when I feel like the necessary information isn’t getting to precisely the people that it needs to get to,” she said.
Risk guidelines ‘patchy’ across Canada
Dr. David Fisman, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health, said there has been enough scientific evidence released in recent months to warrant updating public health guidance on the risk of exposure, even before the emergence of variants.
A recent report from the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention looked at COVID-19 transmission in the National Football League last fall, and found infections were occurring in exposures of less than 15 minutes.
“So that’s before the variants are an issue. So it’s not a variant thing, it’s a COVID thing,” he said. “Maybe what’s motivating people to make these changes is the variant has freaked them out a little bit.”
A shopper wears a mask as he passes a government sign on a bus stop in London, England. The more infectious coronavirus variant first detected in the U.K. is now in Canada. (Kirsty Wigglesworth/The Associated Press)
Fisman said there are still a lot of unknowns with variants. While it’s been proven B117 is more transmissible than previous strains, it’s not entirely clear what that means in terms of how people are likely to get infected.
“That doesn’t tell us that they infect people after shorter exposure, it doesn’t tell us that there’s greater propensity to create aerosols,” he said. “So a lot of this stuff is by definition to be determined.”
Fisman said additional precautions taken in places like York Region exemplify the “precautionary principle” of erring on the side of caution when faced with a lack of scientific evidence — a key lesson from the 2003 SARS epidemic.
Dr. Zain Chagla, an infectious diseases physician at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton and an associate professor at McMaster University, said the lack of movement on public health guidelines from the federal government has left it up to local authorities to make decisions on risk.
“They’re going to make decisions based on where they see,” he said. “They do risk assessments on more than just what the rules provide — the rules are supposed to be a guideline to them.”
Alberta changed its self-isolation rules this week for those infected with variants. It’s now calling for quarantining of contacts for up to 24 days in some cases in response to the added threat of infection they pose.
“This risk assessment is getting very patchy and it’s really confusing,” Chagla said. “But it doesn’t mean that you have to create new rules out of nowhere.”
He said it’s important that public health units are flexible in their assessment of risk, but the lack of coordination at a national level leaves a lot of room for confusion.
“You would like some centralization based on the science and we’re hearing different things across the country in terms of quarantine and what an exposure risk is,” he said.
“Are people going to really adhere when again the rules keep changing left and right?”
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
