“We have to hold on, this is our best way to get through the coming winter weeks,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told a news conference in Ottawa on Friday. “We’ve seen the kinds of impossible choices hospitals in other countries have to face when they are overwhelmed, and decide who gets an ICU bed and who doesn’t. Well, that’s not where we want to be.”
The vast majority of Canadians have dealt with times of stay-at-home orders, and yet the daily number of cases is at its best at a high level.
More worryingly, government officials say Covid-19 deaths are rising steadily and may soon exceed levels seen during the first peak.
“We have not yet seen the kind of widespread and sustained decline in daily case counts that indicates we will bring the pandemic under national control,” he said. Theresa Tam, chief of public health in Canada, said at a news conference on Friday.
Health officials on Friday unveiled a new model showing that Covid-19 remains on a ‘rapid growth path’ in most of Canada.
Hospital admissions and daily numbers have already surpassed those of the first peak in the spring. Earlier this week, the province of Ontario warned that one in four of its hospitals were running out of ICU beds.
Data released Friday shows that Canada currently treats an average of more than 4,700 people in a day in the hospital, with nearly 20% of patients in ICUs.
This is all despite barriers that already exist in the provinces of Quebec and Ontario. Collectively, this means that more than 60% of Canadian home orders are placed, and most stores and restaurants are closed for anything other than pick-up or drop-off.
Health officials pleaded with provincial leaders on Friday to keep strict measures with health care systems at a critical point and already overloaded.
“If we facilitate the measures too soon, the epidemic will repeat itself even more strongly, therefore measures must be consistent and long enough to suppress the growth of the epidemic sufficiently to enable lasting control,” Tam said.
The gloomy forecast comes when Canada announced it would receive fewer Pfizer BioNTech vaccines in the coming weeks. The company has announced a temporary slowdown in its European manufacturing facilities.
“Pfizer believes we will be able to catch up by the end of March, so we will be on track with the total dedicated doses for the first quarter. It’s unfortunate, but such delays and issues are to be expected when global supply chains far beyond their bounds, ”said Anita Anand, Canada’s Secretary of Defense, during a news conference on Friday.
According to Canadian government data, more than 1% of Canadians have been vaccinated so far. Given increasing problems with the provision of vaccines, health officials say the rollout will be too slow to significantly affect infection rates in the coming months.
“This kind of issue is out of our hands,” Trudeau said, adding.