Steep rise in cases ‘what true epidemics look like’

Concerning trend seen as ‘entirely predictable,’ health expert says

“Across the country … particularly in Quebec, Ontario and Alberta, you see true exponential growth, what true epidemics look like.”

DR. DAVID FISMAN UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO’S DALLA LANA SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

OTTAWA— The communications may be clumsy, but the national COVID-19 numbers don’t lie. And they don’t inspire confidence.

The number of people testing positive for the coronavirus in Canada is rising “steeply,” according to federal health authorities. Over the past seven days, an average of 2,052 new cases have been reported daily. That’s a 40 per cent increase over the previous week, when an average of 1,471 new cases were reported each day.

What’s more, the average number of hospitalizations and deaths are increasing.

On any given day this week, 644 individuals with COVID-19 required hospital care, and 18 deaths were reported daily. Those are lagging indicators that reflect infections that happened from one to several weeks ago. The grim report was delivered via a written statement by Canada’s chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, on Wednesday.

Tam did not hold a news conference, nor did the health minister, but Tam said the Public Health Agency of Canada is “monitoring carefully” as the upward trend in hospitalizations and deaths continues.

Dr. David Fisman, of the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health, was more blunt. “Across the country what you see is, particularly in Quebec, Ontario and Alberta, you see true exponential growth, what true epidemics look like,” he said.

Hospitals and intensive-care units are not overwhelmed at this point, Fisman said, but the trend is deeply concerning and “entirely predictable.”

Canada’s most populous provinces are the ones where the epidemic is taking hold again. About 80 per cent of cases nationally have been in Ontario and Quebec, while almost all of the rest come from B.C. and Alberta, Fisman said.

According to Tam’s new numbers, the average daily testing rate remained roughly the same as last week — about 71,000 Canadians are tested daily for COVID-19 — but the new national numbers showed the rate of positive tests rose from 1.7 per cent to 2.5 per cent.

That’s an indicator that Fisman said is especially relevant in Ontario, where it’s becoming more difficult to effectively measure what exactly is going on because the province’s testing system effectively “jammed up” over the past few weeks.

Since schools reopened, the surge of parents and children seeking tests put pressure on clinics and labs around the province. In addition, said Fisman, there are personnel shortages because people “are burned out.” There are also shortages of reagent, which is used for processing test samples, he said, and even a shortage of pipette tips — the pointy plastic attachments that allow precise transfer of liquids from one container to another in a lab.

Ontario Public Health did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday afternoon.

“This is a system under tremendous strain,” Fisman said. That means Ontario doesn’t have a “stable baseline to even measure things anymore.”

Nevertheless, he says, the pertest positivity has “gone up almost vertically in the last two days in Ontario.”

The growth in new cases has spread beyond people aged 20 to 29, who represented the initial surge of the second wave; hospitalization rates are rising, even if they’re nowhere near the rates seen in the spring; and in long-term-care facilities — which Fisman described as “the canary in the coal mine” — there continue to be outbreaks and deaths.

In the House of Commons, the Conservatives slammed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s handling of the pandemic. Trudeau defended his government’s response, pointing to co-operation “even across party lines” with other levels of government.

The federal government this week touted its approval of a new rapid antigen test, and announced a deal to order 8.5 million rapid COVID-19 tests from Germany-based Abbott Rapid Diagnostics.

The gold standard test to detect an active infection remains a molecular polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, the kind that take a nose or throat swab sample and must be sent to a lab for confirmation.