Ontario of Canada says it’s part of third wave of Covid-19 – and officials fear vaccine rollout won’t happen quickly enough

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“We are in the third wave. The numbers are growing slowly, they are not increasing as fast as modelers expect, ”said Dr. David Williams, Chief Medical Officer of Ontario. He added, “We are now starting to see impacts on our hospitalization rates, our ICU admissions are on the rise again, our hospital admissions are on the rise again.”
It was sobering news for a province where the majority of residents have been in a state of lockdown since late last year.

Canadian public health officials have also warned that the vaccine rollout will not happen quickly enough to stop what could be a potentially devastating third wave in other parts of the country, which would boost hospital capacity.

“COVID-19 activity has stabilized at a high level since mid-February and the average daily number of cases is now on the rise,” Dr Theresa Tam, Director of Public Health of Canada, said on Monday. .

“As vaccination programs accelerate, it will be important to maintain a high degree of caution. Any relaxation of public health measures must be done slowly with improved testing, screening and genomic analysis to detect variants of concern.” , she said in a statement.

Canada has reported more than 938,000 suspected or confirmed cases of coronavirus since the start of the pandemic and has recorded more than 22,000 deaths.

Public health officials have been warning for weeks that Canada risks a third wave fueled by variants that are more transmissible and, in some cases, can lead to more serious illness.

A shortage of vaccines

Last month, as the country faced a severe vaccine shortage, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau warned that a third wave was possible.

“We need to continue to take strong public health action,” Trudeau said in a Covid-19 update in February, because “otherwise we could see a third wave even worse than the second or the first, and I know that’s not the news you want to hear. “

On Monday, he said vaccine shipments would continue to increase and Canada is expected to receive up to 2 million doses this week, the maximum it has received in a single week since the approval of four vaccine candidates for emergency use.

But officials across the country now face the possibility that vaccines will not be distributed on time to prevent a significant number of hospitalizations and deaths.

Also on Monday, the province of Alberta announced it will postpone reopening as it has also seen an increase in hospitalizations due to Covid-19.

“Half of those in a hospital bed for COVID are under 65 and almost 90% of those in an intensive care unit for Covid are under 65. Most of them wouldn’t be there if they had been vaccinated by then, “Tyler Shandro, Alberta health minister, said Monday in an update on Covid-19.

While variant B.1.1.7, first detected in the UK, is fueling an increase in cases in Alberta, the health minister also criticized the federal government for not getting enough doses of the vaccine to time to vaccinate the many people who are still at risk of serious results.

Canada received a boost from the Biden administration last week when the two countries reached a deal that will see the United States release 1.5 million of their doses of AstraZeneca to Canada in the coming days. The United States is stocking the AstraZeneca vaccine until it receives FDA approval, which is unlikely until at least next month.

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