Experts break down state of the pandemic

JENNA MOON

Toronto is more than two weeks into Stage 3, and an ongoing low trend in daily COVID-19 numbers seems to have held steady.

Across Ontario, new reports of the novel coronavirus have slowed, meaning the embattled Windsor-Essex region can finally join the rest of the province in Stage 3. The province might be experiencing a “basement” in cases, one epidemiologist said, meaning that while we might not drive cases any lower than this, we can likely expect an uptick in the fall.

The Star asked two infectious disease experts — Anna Banerji from the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and Raywat Deonandan of the University of Ottawa — to weigh in on the data the Star has collected on the state of the COVID-19 crisis in Ontario. Here’s what they had to say about what the trends tells us. Comments have been edited for brevity and clarity.

Ontario-wide trends Deonandan: It looks like this wave is pretty much over in Ontario. But that’s a dangerous thing to say, because it assumes that all is said and done — it isn’t. This is probably something resembling a “basement” of cases. We could drive it lower, but I doubt that we will. We should brace ourselves for the inevitable climb in the fall. However, it’s entirely possible that all of our public health endeavours like mask wearing and compelled distancing will manifest as positive change.

Toronto’s trends Banerji: Whatever we’re doing, we’re doing it correctly. If there was going to be a big rise from Toronto opening up, we would have seen it by now. And that we haven’t seen a massive rise is really reassuring.

I think a lot of it is because people are co-operating, wearing masks and continuing to physically distance. That said, it’s reassuring — but that doesn’t mean things can’t change. If we let our guard down the virus could start surging upwards. Deonandan: It looks like Toronto has not experienced the expected bump in cases. And I suspect it might have something to do with mask wearing.The fact that we aren’t seeing any strong increase is, I think, people for the most part being responsible. And we can’t measure the effect of these things yet, at least not accurately, but I do think that there’s something to be said for the effect of masks.

Windsor-Essex’s downward slope Banerji: One of the reasons cases might be dropping off here is that many ill migrant workers that were infected are now in isolation.

A lot of what was driving the cases in Windsor-Essex was people commuting across the border for work. But recently, people crossing the border are taking more preventative measures such as wearing masks.

Seven-day averages across the province Banerji: There is day-to-day variability in these numbers, even though these are sevenday averages.

The virus has moved through institutions and long-termcare facilities, and it’s not surprising that it’s here and starting to spread out through other regions. The GTA might have followed behind the rest of Ontario because behaviour around masks is different here. Deonandan: It’s certainly interesting that the rest of the province trended higher.

That’s probably due to the fact the rest of the province has a lot more heterogeneity — you’ve got Ottawa on the one hand, which has had some issues, and you’ve got North Bay on the other hand that didn’t have any issues, so you average them out, meaning the rest of the province was more problematic. And, the GTA opened up later, in both Stage 2 and Stage 3, so they’ve had less of a chance of having a bad experience.