Canada’s ‘inevitable’ second wave of COVID-19 will expose surveillance blindspots: experts
No one knows when a fresh surge of COVID-19 cases will emerge in Canada, but experts agree numbers are poised to rise and could very well explode in surveillance blindspots.
One need only look to South Korea, where infections spread anew through Seoul’s nightclubs and bars, to see how quickly containment successes unravel when undetected cases spark flareups.
Of course, nightclubs remain closed in Canada, but the infection risk of a vast array of public spaces is being tested for the first time in coming weeks -- retail stores, golf ranges, bar patios and some offices among them. A “tried and true” principle with any respiratory virus is that infection risk is lower outside and in larger spaces where germs can dissipate, says Dr. Camille Lemieux, medical lead for the COVID-19 assessment centre at Toronto’s Western Hospital. That’s opposed to small, confined areas with poor ventilation, but the speed of this novel coronavirus to find human hosts is what’s most concerning, says Lemieux.
“The one thing about COVID that I think has a lot of people stymied is the rapidity with which it spreads when it gets a foothold,” says Lemieux, also chief of family medicine at the University Health Network in Toronto. Even with containment, the virus is circulating in the community thanks to a small percentage of people with mild and no symptoms who don’t even know they are sick, adds Dr. Gerald Evans, medical director of infection control at the Kingston Health
Sciences Centre.Evans says “second waves are inevitable” as regions open up, using the term loosely to mean any uptick big or small. He cautions against suggesting one sector of public life -- such as the tennis court -- is safer from the virus than others. ”If people start congregating around campfires and other things in parks, and then large groups of golfers are getting together and hanging out, that could facilitate transmission,” says Evans, also chair of the division of infectious diseases at Queen’s University.
If Evans were to guess, he says a Canadian resurgence is very likely to start among younger adults who resume social activities, suggesting they’re more likely to risk exposure and will have been largely shielded from infection.
“They have been in literal isolation now for months,” Evans notes. ”So, when we start to open restaurants, and we start to open social venues, I think what we saw in Korea is a distinct possibility of what might emerge here.” This may sound obvious but wherever it happens, it’ll be precisely where we are not looking, says Lemieux, which is why ramped-up testing and contact tracing measures are critical as millions of Canadians consider increased exposure.
She stressed the need for aggressive surveillance that can quickly respond to any signs of resurgence.
“The only way we can do that is by allowing broad-based testing of the public,” says Lemieux, a vocal critic of testing rates in ON.