Top doctor says virus’s spread slowing in Canada
Despite decline, easing restrictions too quickly still risky, Tam warns
OTTAWA—Canada’s top doctor says the country has been successful at slowing the spread of COVID-19 but warns that relaxing public health restrictions too quickly or too soon could lead to a rampant resurgence of the disease.
Dr. Theresa Tam presented a new report on the coronavirus in Canada on Thursday, including new short-term projections that say between 157 and 1,857 more Canadians could die of COVID-19 in the next 11 days.
The projections, based on recent trends, estimate in the best-case scenario at least another 4,459 people will be diagnosed with COVID-19 by June 15, and in the worst-case scenario there will be more than 14,000 new cases by then. What happens depends almost entirely on how well Canadians practise proper public health behaviours, and how good health systems are at testing, contact tracing and isolating positive cases.
“Without a vaccine or treatment, public health measures remain essential to control the epidemic,” Tam said.
Canada has been averaging just under 800 new cases a day for the past week, down from an average of 1,050 new cases the week before that.
Tam said most of the country has seen spread of the disease diminish substantially but there remain hot spots of community transmission in Toronto and Montreal that are concerning.
In the past two weeks, Ontario and Quebec accounted for 90 per cent of new cases, and most of those were in those two cities.
Tam said the efforts Canada has made, including physical distancing and closures of businesses and public spaces, have allowed us to flatten the curve, but we can’t get cocky and think the worst is over so we can get back to normal now.
“Resurgence can actually occur at any time over the course of the outbreak depending on what we’re doing on the ground,” she said. “We mustn’t forget that.”
As of Thursday, Tam said, Canada has had 93,441 positive cases and 7,543 deaths. She said about 16 per cent of patients required hospitalization and three per cent needed to be admitted to intensive care.
Plans to test Canadians for antibodies to detect whether they have had the coronavirus will give a better sense of the true number of cases, Tam said.