Canada’s top doctor warns current measures not enough to control Covid variants

By: Thomas I. Likness
EBC News Service

OTTAWA (Eagle News) — As provincial governments across Canada begin easing restrictions Canada’s chief public health officer warns more contagious Covid variants are waiting in the wings to spark a third wave of the pandemic.

“Longer-range modelling, including variants of concern, shows that current public health measures will not be sufficient to control rapid growth and a resurgence is forecast,” Dr. Theresa Tam tweeted Friday.

By spring, Canada could see up to 20,000 new cases a day, Tam warned.

Even with current restrictions, new cases could reach 10,000 a day by April, she said.

Tam reiterated the need for people to strictly adhere to individual precautions.

“We need to follow public Health Advice and aim for the best individual precautions by having the fewest interactions with the fewest people for the shortest time at the greatest distance, while wearing the best fitting face-mask,” tweeted Tam.

Tam joined the weekly conference call Thursday night that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau holds with the premiers.

And she had some advice for provincial governments that are lifting some restrictions.

“If you ease anything at all, it better be slow with a lot of surveillance testing,” Tam told a briefing Friday in Ottawa.

She said the recent outbreak in Newfoundland and Labrador shows how quickly the variants can work their way through the population.

The province has reported dozens of new cases in the past two week.

Many of the new infections were in people under the age of 40.

At a news conference Friday, Trudeau said while public health measures have been working, now is not the time to be complacent.

“We have to keep taking strong public health measures,” said Trudeau. “Otherwise we could see a third wave that is even worse than the second or the first.”
(Eagle News)