Worry grows over virus variants
Toronto, Peel Region requesting extension to COVID lockdown
Officials expressed growing concern Wednesday over highly transmissible new COVID-19 variants taking hold in Canada’s biggest cities and in First Nation reserves across the country.
Toronto’s mayor, top doctor and emergency management boss announced they want the metropolis to remain under Ontario’s toughest restrictions until at least March 9, two weeks longer than planned.
“I have never been as worried about the future as I am today,” said medical officer of health Dr. Eileen de Villa.
She said there are 56 cases with variants of concern — predominantly the one first identified in the United Kingdom — in Toronto, up from 33 a week ago.
Another 283 cases have screened positive for being variants of concern and lab work is underway to make the final confirmation, de Villa added.
She said the city faces a “deceptively dangerous situation,” as overall daily case counts have been trending lower lately.
“Today’s variant count is the tip of an iceberg,” de Villa said.
“By the time the confirmed case counts are big enough to shock us, it will be too late to do anything. We will be in a third wave as bad as anything we’ve been through thus far.”
The top doctor in Peel Region, a COVID-19 hot spot west of Toronto, joined de Villa in asking Ontario’s chief medical officer of health for a two-week extension to the tougher rules.
In Ottawa, Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller said he fears the prospect of variants taking hold in First Nation communities, where residents often live in overcrowded homes and have worse health outcomes due to several socioeconomic factors.
“I don’t think I can be any more concerned,” Miller said.
Miller said that, as of Tuesday, there had been more than 19,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases on First Nation reserves, nearly 1,400 of which were active.
Active cases are one-quarter what they were a month ago, but Miller said “these numbers continue to be alarming.”
He said the Prairie Provinces, in particular, have had “really scary spikes.”
“It is no secret that the opening up of the economies at the end of the summer created that catalyst,” Miller said. “The science is showing that we’re still very much at risk as a country and none more so than Indigenous communities, who have really, really fought and continue to fight overwhelming odds.
“The best way to see a third wave is to ignore the science.”
New recommendations from the National Advisory Committee say all adults in Indigenous communities should receive a COVID-19 vaccine in the second stage of the immunization campaign to start this spring.
Miller said vaccinations have started in 400 Indigenous communities. More than 83,000 doses had been administered as of Tuesday. Miller said vaccines have been delivered to about a quarter of the adult population in First Nations, Inuit and territorial communities, a rate that is six times higher than that of the general population.