Ontario expecting variant to surge
More contagious version of COVID-19 expected to be dominant in March
The more contagious B.1.1.7 variant of COVID-19 is expected to become the “dominant” strain hitting Ontario in March, making it hard to predict when more businesses and schools can reopen despite a recent decline in case levels, public health officials say.
The stay-at-home order issued by Premier Doug Ford this month and the Dec. 26 lockdown have reduced infection levels by half from their peaks, but “we’re nowhere in the clear yet,” Dr. Adalsteinn Brown, chair of the science table advising the government, warned Thursday.
He called the variant now in several communities, including the GTA and Barrie, “a significant threat to control of the pandemic” and cited “significant concerns it is more lethal,” urging Ontarians to follow standard precautions and avoid crowded and confined spaces.
“There’s a high chance it’s moving quite aggressively in some areas and leading to community-wide spread,” chief medical officer Dr. David Williams said as daily cases of COVID-19 rose to 2,093, an unexpected uptick fuelled by a sharp increase of 700 infections in Toronto.
However, experience in European countries battling variants suggests keeping public health restrictions in place will help daily case numbers stay on a downward track, allowing classroom learning to resume with precautions such as expanded testing, Brown told a briefing where he presented the latest computer modelling on the trajectory of COVID-19.
“If we are careful, and if we watch the data carefully, it should be possible to control the spread of the disease with schools open,” added Brown, dean of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.
“It will be a challenging decision for the province’s leaders. And it may require different approaches in different regions.”
Schools in the GTA and other parts of southern Ontario are slated to resume in-class learning Feb. 10, but Brown and Williams said community transmission of the virus must be further reduced to make sure reopenings can be sustained.
“We don’t want schools opening and then closing,” Williams added, saying improved measures to protect teachers and students “are being worked on now.”
He did not set out any criteria for reopenings and said more data is needed over the next week.
Critics have repeatedly called for smaller class sizes and better ventilation.
While the B.1.1.7 variant is about 56 per cent more contagious than standard COVID-19 strains in Britain, it appears to be “at least” 30 per cent more transmissible here, according to the latest data.
With vaccines in short supply, the strain caused case levels in Britain to triple last year, put further pressure on hospital intensive care units and lead to more infections and deaths in nursing homes already hard hit in the second wave.
The variant, and others from Brazil and South Africa not yet detected in Ontario, “give us less room to relax and less room for error,” said Brown.