Canada, Ontario, says it’s in the third wave of Covid-19 – and officials are worried the vaccine’s explosion may not happen fast enough

Canada, Ontario, says it’s in the third wave of Covid-19 – and officials are worried the vaccine’s explosion may not happen fast enough

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“We are in the third wave. The numbers are rising slowly, it is not going as fast as the models predicted,” said Dr. David Williams, the chief medical officer for Ontario. He added: “We are now starting to see the impact on our hospital rates, our admissions to ICUs are up again, our admissions to the hospital are up again.”
This was sobering news for a province where the majority of residents have been in a certain state since the end of last year.

Canadian public health officials also warned that the deployment of vaccines would not take place fast enough to stem a potentially devastating third wave in other parts of the country, further emphasizing hospital capacity.

“COVID-19 activities have leveled off at a high level since mid-February and the daily number of cases is now increasing,” said Dr. Theresa Tam, chief of Canada’s public health official, said Monday.

“As vaccination programs accelerate, it will be important to maintain a high degree of caution. Any mitigation of public health measures should be done slowly with better testing, screening and genomic analysis to detect variants,” she said. said in a statement.

Canada has reported more than 938,000 suspected or confirmed cases of coronavirus since the onset of the pandemic and has recorded more than 22,000 deaths.

Public health officials have been warning for weeks that Canada is risking a third wave that is fueled by the more transmissible variants and in some cases could lead to serious illness.

A shortage of vaccines

As the country has a severe shortage of vaccines, Justin Trudeau warned last month that a third wave is a possibility.

“We need to continue to take strong social health measures,” Trudeau said during an update of Covid-19 in February, because “otherwise we could see a third wave that is even worse than the second or the first, and I know this is not the news you want to hear. ‘

On Monday, he said vaccine vaccination would continue to increase, and that Canada is expected to receive as many as two million doses this week, the most it has received in a single week since four emergency vaccine candidates were approved.

But officials across the country now face the possibility that the vaccines will not be distributed in time to avoid a significant number of hospitalizations and deaths.

The province of Alberta also said on Monday that it would delay the reopening, as hospitalizations due to Covid-19 would also increase.

“Half of those who are in a hospital bed for COVID are under the age of 65 and almost 90% of those who are in an ICU for Covid are under 65. Most of them would not be there if they was not vaccinated at this time, ‘Tyler Shandro, Alberta’s health minister, said on Monday during an update of the Covid-19.

While the B.1.1.7 variant, first detected in the UK, is fueling an increase in cases in Alberta, the health minister has blamed the federal government for not providing enough vaccine doses in time to the many people who still have the serious outcomes.

Canada received a boost from the Biden government last week when the two countries entered into an agreement in which the US will release 1.5 million of its doses of AstraZeneca to Canada in the coming days. The US will suspend the AstraZeneca vaccine until it receives FDA approval, which is likely only next month.

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