Trudeau warns of dangerous third wave as Canada faces vaccine ‘drought’

“We have to make sure that while the provinces consider easing some restrictions, other restrictions are maintained, and there is an ability to … react quickly when variations appear,” Trudeau said.

The new modeling highlights the fact that “variants of concern” have now been detected in all provinces and continue to spread. Based on projections released by public health officials, current public health measures would not be enough to contain the spread of the virus by spring if the new, more contagious variants take hold.

“A resurgence is very likely if people abandon public health measures now. What you want to do is continue to avoid this top-down yoyo effect. You need to avoid full lockdowns and curfews and all of these things in trying to maintain a high level of public health metrics, ”said Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, during a modeling presentation Friday.

The province of Ontario announced on Friday that the city of Toronto and one of its neighboring regions would remain on lockdown, with a stay-at-home order, until at least March 8, amid the threat of spread of new variants continues to worry health officials.

Canada remains fairly vulnerable to a third wave as new variants of Covid-19 continue to spread and vaccine deployment remains extremely slow across the country.

“We need more vaccines, more vaccines will solve huge problems …”, Doug Ford, Premier of Ontario, said at a press conference in Toronto on Friday.

Like other provinces and territories in Canada, Ontario has successfully immunized the vast majority of residents and staff in long-term care homes. These residents continue to represent the people most vulnerable to Covid-19 in Canada.

But there has been no significant deployment of vaccines in other vulnerable groups, except indigenous communities. The commander who was leading the vaccine deployment in Ontario called the situation a “vaccine drought.”

“We did not waste our time while we were in this drought, with a minimal amount of vaccine to use, what we have done is prepare for the day when more will arrive,” said the retired general. Rick Hillier at a Friday press conference in Toronto.

Gen. Hillier said his vaccine task force would now prioritize healthcare workers “in contact with patients,” among other risk groups, and said he expected the scarcity of vaccine doses is improving over the next few weeks.