A month ago, Dr. Adalsteinn Brown, co-chair of Ontario’s COVID-19 Scientific Advisory Table, sat down with the provincial medical director, Dr. David Williams, where he revealed modeling data to indicate that a third wave would likely reach the province with the most infectious variants of COVID-19 playing a significant role.
Instead of continuing to maintain the blocking restrictions in place, to the shock of many, including those at the Bureau of Science, Doug Ford’s government went in the opposite direction and eased the restrictions. For Dr. Gerald Evans, President and Medical Director of Infection Prevention and Control at the Kingston Health Sciences Center and a member of the Science Table, lifting restrictions is yet another indication that the government is playing the “game of hope” with pandemic.
“We don’t make many mistakes in predicting what would happen, but I think that is the nature of politicians. I think they have a lot of positive thoughts. We got it right more than we got it wrong, ”said Dr. Evans.
Although Ontario’s case numbers have dropped since the height of the second wave, they are steadily rising from less than 1,000 a day to 1,747 on March 14. The numbers are going in the opposite direction from when they eased the restrictions, but that was predicted that time.
In the worst case scenario, modeling suggested that by April, cases in the province could reach or exceed 8,000. Whether B.1.1.7 emerging from Britain or a myriad of others from Brazil, South Africa and other countries, variants that were significantly more transmissible were expected to surpass the current strain. Recent data released by the Ontario Science Table shows that this is exactly what is happening, as variants accounted for 49 percent of cases on March 15. The Ontario Hospital Association has quantified the most recent data and declared the most recent outbreak as the starting point of the third wave.
We are now on wave 3: New data from Ont’s COVID-19 Scientific Advisory Table. With new cases of VOC with marked increase and ICU #s upward trend (close to 350 today), strong adherence to public health measures is urgently needed to avoid overloaded hospitals: https://t.co/bY90oTlDMz pic.twitter.com/hYl8twUhRs
– Ont. Hospital Assoc. (@OntHospitalAssn) March 15, 2021
Dr. Evans said he was “cautiously concerned” due to the lifting of restrictions and the variety of cases due to the different variants at play.
“I think that my personal view is somehow the political leadership, they hear this data, but they are kind of wishing that maybe it doesn’t. I think they are waiting for one of those times when we are wrong, ”he said.
Suspending home stay orders went against everything the Science Table suggested at the time and, in Dr. Evans’ opinion, the province needed at least another three to four weeks of restrictions to ensure that cases did not increase again. . With his advice falling on deaf ears at times, Dr. Evans thinks that the Science Table sometimes looks great, but suggestions based on his knowledge are not valued.
“I think, quite frankly, sometimes I feel like we’re decorating the window. Having advisory boards and people examining them to provide evidence looks very good, ”said Dr. Gerald Evans.
Ontario, and Canada as a whole, has been struggling to get enough vaccines to inoculate its at-risk population, and with valuable vaccine doses, it was clear that Ontario should have postponed the removal of restrictions at the time, according to Dr. Evans .
“There is no doubt that it is very easy from my point of view as an identity doctor, if you keep the restrictions and apply a lot of vaccines, you will avoid this third wave entirely,” he said.
How bad could a third wave be?
The second wave of COVID-19 exposed the province’s lack of preparation, a mediocre school plan, a reluctance to tighten up restrictions quickly enough and, most importantly, the danger to older people living in long-term care homes. However, health experts have always expected the second wave to be worse than the first. Now, going to the third wave, Dr. Evans admits that the vaccine can alleviate some of the destruction.
“We are starting to increase the distribution of vaccines here in the province and this will moderate how bad things can go,” he said.
Dr. Evans added that, being later in the pandemic, more population has been immunized, so we will see fewer hospitalizations and doctors are better suited to deal with serious cases. But with the vaccine being prioritized based on risk, Dr. Evans notes that we can see another peak in cases similar to last summer among groups of 20 to 40 years old.
“We are still at risk of a third wave, which is generated by large segments of the population that are not vaccinated and for whom we know that transmission occurs promptly,” said Dr. Evans.
“We will see growing cases, if that really takes hold.”
This is where, as Dr. Evans notes, political will needs to come into play, because by acting quickly to save the economy, the province has opened up to another potential blockade by not waiting for the doses of the vaccine to arrive.
“It would have been much better if we didn’t have to deal with the lack of vaccine doses and we could have contained the restrictions,” he said.
It is not the first time that a member of the Ontario Science Table has expressed concern about how the province has justified decision-making through the misuse of data. But in this case, Dr. Evans believes that the voices of groups like the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses and others have managed to get the province to change its timelines and approach.
“At the same time, they are listening to us, they are listening to small business owners, they are listening to large companies. They are listening to their party base and we have diluted ourselves, ”he said.
When it comes to a third wave, Dr. Evans notes that the members of the Science Table provided the Ford government with the correct data, but now, being almost imminent, if it was not already underway, it was because the premier and the company were influenced by non-medical voices to deal with a pandemic.
“I feel that our information, we feed it objectively, and I think that many other groups come to them with their opinions on what to do with public health restrictions, this is subjective,” he said.
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