The third wave began because the province went against advice and lifted restrictions, says the member of the Science Table

A month ago, dr. Adalsteinn Brown, co-chair of Ontario’s COVID-19 scientific advice table, with the province’s chief medical officer, dr. variants of COVID-19 play an important role.

Instead of continuing to maintain their restrictions on the closure period, the Doug Ford government went the other way and reduced restrictions. For Dr. Gerald Evans, chairman and medical director of infection prevention and control at the Kingston Health Sciences Center and member of the Science Table, says lifting restrictions is another indication that the government is playing the ‘hope game’ with the pandemic.

“We have not made many mistakes yet in predicting what is going to happen, but I think that is the nature of politicians. I think there is a lot of wishful thinking they have. “We looked quite a lot more than we did wrong,” said Dr Evans.

As Ontario’s case numbers decline from the peak of the second wave, it gradually rises from below 1,000 per day until 1747 on March 14th. The numbers go in the opposite direction of the constraint, but it was predicted at that time.

In the worst case, the modeling suggested that cases in the province could reach or exceed 8,000 by April. Whether it is the B.1.1.7 coming from Britain, or a host of others from Brazil, South Africa and other countries, variants that were significantly more transferable are expected to catch up with the current tensions. Recent data released by Ontario’s Science Table shows that this is exactly what is happening as the variants make up 49 percent of cases as of March 15th. The Ontario Hospital Association has quantified the latest data and the latest outbreak as the starting point of the third wave.

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Dr. Evans said he was “cautiously concerned” because the restrictions and the variety of cases had been lifted due to the different variants.

‘I think my personal view is somehow the political leadership. They hear this information, but they so wish that it might not happen. “I think they are waiting for one of these times that we are wrong,” he said.

The lifting of the home orders was against everything the Science Table proposed at the time, and according to Dr. Evans still needed at least three to four weeks for the province to ensure that things did not rise. up again. With their advice sometimes falling on deaf ears, Dr. Evans sometimes thinks the Science Table looks good, but the suggestions based on their expertise are not appreciated.

‘I think in all honesty, sometimes I feel like we’re pulling a window. The advice tables and people who look at it to provide evidence look really good, ”said dr. Gerald Evans said.

Ontario and Canada as a whole struggled to get enough vaccines to vaccinate the dangerous population, and with the vaccination of the vaccine at a premium, it was clear that Ontario had to do away with the removal of restrictions at the time. Dr. Evans.

‘There’s no doubt that from my perspective as an ID doctor it’s very easy. If you keep the restrictions and roll out a lot of vaccinations, you will prevent this third wave completely, ‘he said.

How bad can a third wave be?

The second wave of COVID-19 exposed the province’s lack of preparation, of a mediocre school plan, to an unwillingness to increase restrictions quickly enough, and especially the danger to the elderly living in long-term care homes. However, health experts have always expected the second wave to be worse than the first. Now, in the third wave, Dr. Evans admits that the vaccine could alleviate the destruction.

“We are starting to better sharpen the distribution of vaccines here in the province, and that will determine how bad it can go,” he said.

Dr. Evans added that more of the population was immunized, later in the pandemic, so that we would see fewer hospitalizations, and that doctors were better suited to deal with serious cases. However, since the vaccine is preferred on a risk basis, dr. Evans points out that we can see a further increase in cases such as last summer among 20- to 40-year-old groups.

“We are still at risk for a third wave, which is generated by large sections of the population that are not vaccinated and for which we know that transmission takes place easily,” Dr Evans said.

“We’re going to see increasing cases if it really gets a foothold.”

This is true, as dr. Evans notes, political will must come into play, because by moving quickly to save the economy, the province has opened itself up to another possible exclusion by not waiting for the vaccine to be vaccinated.

“It would have been much better if we did not have to deal with the doses of vaccines and withhold restrictions,” he said.

This is not the first time a member of Ontario’s Science Table has expressed concern about how the province has justified the justification of decisions through data misuse. But in this case, Dr. Evans believes the voices of groups such as the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and others could get the province to change their timelines and approach.

‘At the same time, they listen to us, they listen to small business people and they listen to big business. “They are listening to their party base, and we are being diluted,” he said.

If it comes down to a third wave, Dr. Evans points out that members of the Science Table provided the Ford government with the correct information, but because it was almost at hand when it was not yet underway, it was because the prime minister and the company were by non-medical votes to ‘ to deal with a pandemic.

“I feel that our information is given to them as objective, and I think a lot of other groups come to them with their opinions on what they should do with public health restrictions, it’s subjective,” he said.

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