Variants bring `third wave' risk

The province's latest modelling data “tells two stories,” the cochair of the Ontario COVID-19 Science Table says.

One is the success in “bending the curve back down” through stringent public health measures, Adalsteinn Brown said Thursday.

But the other, he warned, is the “real threat” posed by new variants emerging in Ontario. If the U.K. or South Africa variants already detected in the province spread out of control, Brown said, there's a risk of a “third wave.”

The latest data indicates public health measures are “paying off,” he said, with declining mobility, cases, positivity rates and hospitalizations.

“Focusing vaccination on longterm care homes is paying off with declining daily deaths. ICU occupancy is flat and the access to care deficit continues to grow,” Brown said.

“The B.1.1.7 variant of concern is spreading. Cases will likely grow again in late February with ICU admissions increasing afterwards. Aggressive vaccination and sticking with stay-at-home order will help avoid a third wave and a third lockdown.”

B.1.1.7 is the so-called “UK variant.” Ontario confirmed eight new cases of the B.117 variant on Thursday, for a total of 236 confirmed cases, six of them in Ottawa.

There are three known cases of the B.1.351 variant, known as the “South African” variant, including one in Ottawa.

Meanwhile, the province had to backtrack on Thursday after announcing the first round of vaccines in all Ontario long-term care

homes had been completed.

The news release announcing the province had met its Feb. 10 target to get at least one dose of vaccine to all long-term care residents was taken off the provincial website after several people on Twitter complained vaccinations had not been completed in their regions.

The Ministry of Long Term Care called it a miscommunication and said vaccinations would be complete in the coming days.

Ottawa South Liberal MPP John

Fraser called it “unacceptable” that the province hadn't met the deadline, which had been extended from an earlier deadline.

“The government has not had a clear plan to get vaccines to our vulnerable seniors living in longterm care and now, two months into the rollout, they have still not been able to provide first vaccine doses to every resident, even after extending their deadline,” Fraser said.

Speaking on an online panel of physicians and other health care workers on vaccines, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday that vaccines were the path through and out of this crisis.

“We are very aware we need more vaccines and we need them quicker,” Trudeau said. “But we are approaching something we called `the big lift,' which is the phase in which we go from vaccine scarcity, as we are right now, to receiving millions upon millions — even tens of millions of vaccines — into the spring,” he said.

Many on the panel pointed out disparities in access to vaccines and concerns about vulnerable populations, including Indigenous and racialized people, those with disabilities, the homeless and people with addictions.