“We have to tighten our belts, this is our best way to survive in the coming winter weeks,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said during a news conference on Friday in Ottawa. “We saw the kinds of impossible choices that hospitals in other countries had to face when they were overwhelmed, deciding who gets a bed in the ICU and who doesn’t. Well, it’s not where we want to be ”.
The vast majority of Canadians have been dealing with weeks of requests to stay home, yet the daily case count has reached high levels.
More worrisome, government officials say Covid-19-related deaths are steadily increasing and may soon exceed levels seen during the first peak.
“We have not yet seen the type of widespread and sustained decline in the daily case count that would indicate that we are controlling the pandemic nationally,” said Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s director of public health, during a news conference on Friday.
Health officials released a new model on Friday that showed that Covid-19 continues on a “rapid growth trajectory” in most of Canada.
Hospitalizations and the number of daily cases have already exceeded those of the first peak of spring. Earlier this week, the province of Ontario warned that one in four of its hospitals ran out of ICU beds.
Data released on Friday show that Canada now has an average of more than 4,700 people being treated at the hospital on any given day, with almost 20% of those patients in the ICU.
All of this occurs despite the blockages already in place in the provinces of Quebec and Ontario. Taken together, this means that more than 60% of Canadians are under orders to stay at home, with most retailers and restaurants closed to anything other than pickup or delivery.
Health officials pleaded with provincial leaders on Friday to keep strict measures in place with health systems at a critical and already overburdened point.
“If we facilitate measures too early, the epidemic will resurface even stronger, which is why the measures need to be consistent and sustained long enough to suppress the growth of the epidemic in order to allow lasting control,” said Tam.
The gloomy forecast comes as Canada announces that it will receive fewer vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech in the coming weeks. The company announced a temporary slowdown at its European manufacturing facilities.
“Pfizer believes that by the end of March we will be able to catch up, so that we will be on track with the total doses committed for the first quarter. This is unfortunate, however, such delays and problems are expected when the chains global supply chains have stretched far beyond their limit, “said Anita Anand, Canada’s procurement minister, during a news conference on Friday.
Canadian government data reveal that just over 1% of Canadians have been vaccinated so far. Given the growing problems with vaccine supply, health officials say the launch will be too slow to have a significant impact on infection rates in the coming months.
“This kind of problem is out of our hands,” said Trudeau, adding: “I want to be very clear, it doesn’t affect our goal of having enough vaccines by September for every Canadian who wants one.”