Canada is currently experiencing a third COVID-19 wave and is reportedly on track to surpass the US in terms of its rate of new infections relative to the overall population. Worse, the country is seeing significant outbreaks of dangerous coronavirus strains that are more transmissible than the original virus and possibly even vaccine-resistant.
The trend is so worrying that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has updated Canada’s travel advice (a level four – the highest possible risk category) to include a warning that even fully vaccinated Americans do not have the danger must venture north of the U.S. border. . The change came on the same day that the CDC issued new travel guidelines for vaccinated Americans, in which the agency said those who were fully vaccinated could move safely across the country.
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“Due to the current situation in Canada, even travelers who are fully vaccinated may be at risk of getting and distributing COVID-19 variants, and this should avoid all travel to Canada,” the website now reads. If you are traveling to Canada, you must be fully vaccinated before traveling. All travelers should wear a mask, stay 6 feet away from others, avoid crowds and wash their hands. ”
The Great White North has been keeping the issue relatively low for a whole year now while the health crisis in the US continues to escalate. So what happened?
First, the pandemic situation in America is finally improving, thanks to a massive nationwide vaccination campaign and the government obtaining a generous supply of the COVID-19 vaccine, while our northern neighbor’s vaccination efforts lagged behind those of many other countries.
The US has so far managed to get about 19 percent of its population vaccinated in full, while Canada can say just about two percent of its population the same. The National Post reported that from April 6, about one-third of Americans received at least the first shot of a COVID-19 vaccine, while only 16 percent of Canadians received at least one dose.
The Johns Hopkins University data collection this week revealed that the U.S. sees approximately 196 new COVID-19 cases per million people per day, while approximately 180 new cases per million people are added daily in Canada (based on a seven-day moving average). Noel Gibney, an emeritus professor at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Alberta, said it was almost certain that Canada would surpass the US in the next few days in terms of community distribution.
The infiltration of more contagious, and possibly even more deadly, viral variants is blamed for the cause of Canada’s third COVID-19 wave. According to a vice-report, Canada is one of the only countries in the world that has struggled simultaneously with the eruptions of three different variants.
In Alberta, experts believe that the B.1.1.7 British variant has almost completely replaced the original COVID-19 strain. The P1 variant that originated in Brazil – which re-infected people who had previously contracted and recovered from COVID-19 and may be vaccine-resistant, is also spreading in Canada, just like the B1351 variant that first times came from South Africa.
Just as Americans are warned to stay away, Canadian health officials are also begging Canadians to avoid non-essential travel within the country; although experts say that stricter travel restrictions at this stage may not be enough to limit the spread of the highly transferable variants.
Ashleigh Tuite, an epidemiologist of infectious diseases and assistant professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, commented on the prevalence of the variant in Ontario: ‘It’s incredibly widespread, so I think it’s the merit. is to restrict movement between areas … But as a way to control the distribution of variants? That ship had probably already sailed. ‘