Time to make Montreal the priority

For far too long, Quebec has left the city to flail, struggle and limp along on its own

For the first time since the COVID -19 crisis broke out two months ago, Premier François Legault will pay an official visit to Montreal, the epicentre of the outbreak.

Legault announced Tuesday that he plans to come to the city Thursday and Friday. He will meet with Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante, local public health authorities and administrators at some of the city’s CIUSSSS, which are in charge of long-term care homes and hospitals.

It’s about time Legault gave Montreal his full attention.

Montreal is not only ground zero of the pandemic in Quebec, it is the worst-afflicted place in Canada. While the famous curve of COVID-19 cases is getting flatter in the regions of Quebec, paving the way for a relaunch of the economy and a reopening of schools outside the metropolitan area this week, the situation remains precarious in the city. So it’s high time Legault makes arresting the epidemic in Montreal his top priority.

While it is normal that the premier hunkered down in Quebec City during the early days of the pandemic — to protect his own health and to stay on top of a rapidly evolving situation from the nerve centre at the National Assembly — his prolonged absence from the city has left him disconnected from the realities of Montreal.

Sure, his office is in contact with Plante’s and the premier communicates with ministers, business leaders and other Montrealers as part of his crisis response. But this is not the same as the general going to the battlefront and taking in the lay of the land himself, to use a war metaphor.

Lately Legault has faced criticism for pressing ahead with plans to restart Quebec when the situation is far from under control in Montreal. The city has lurched along, preparing for a gradual deconfinement still set for May 25, despite grave concerns about Montreal’s readiness for an easing of emergency measures.

Montreal accounts for about half of Quebec’s 39,225 COVID-19 cases and the majority of 3,131 deaths. On Tuesday, 113 of the 118 new deaths occurred in Montreal.

Montreal now ranks seventh in the world for the number of new deaths in a day. And the latest projections on the evolution of the epidemic in the city from the Institut national de santé publique du Québec paint a grim picture: up to 10,000 new cases and 150 deaths a day by July if social-distancing measures are lifted too quickly — and that’s not even counting nursing homes.

For the moment, it doesn’t seem like anyone has a full grasp on why the infection rate in Montreal is so dire. There are some obvious hypotheses, including that it’s a dense city, there is less room for people to spread out, there is more poverty or the typical channels of communication may not be getting through in some neighbourhoods.

But speculation won’t stop the spread of COVID-19.

Understanding the epidemiology of coronavirus in Montreal is essential to getting the virus under control. Ramping up mass testing, as promised, is part of figuring out why cases are exploding in neighbourhoods like Montreal-north or why the death toll in Hochelaga-maisonneuve is so disproportionate?

So far these efforts have fallen short.

We need to know how much of this is related to long-term care centres and health workers and how much of the spread is through community transmission. As of Tuesday, Dr. Horacio Arruda, Quebec’s director of public health, said he was still waiting to get his hands on such figures.

For too long, Montreal has been treated as a pariah, an impediment to a long-awaited return to some semblance of normalcy. It has been left to flail, struggle and limp along.

Rising public anger and declining popularity may have finally convinced Legault to get serious about Montreal.

He won’t be able to figure everything out in two days. But showing up is a start. Only giving Montreal the attention it deserves will lead to the breakthrough everyone has been hoping for.