Well the news in Ontario has improved dramatically on the
pandemic front. Daily case numbers today
were 370 – down from over 2,000 a month ago.
Daily deaths have also been falling.
If one takes a look at the daily case counts since the start of the
pandemic in late January of 2020, it looks like that the third wave is
definitely on the way out. Ontario (See Figure
1) had three waves each worse than the other.
The first wave now looks relatively minor compared to the second one
which peaked in early January of 2021 and the third wave which peaked in mid-April
of 2021.
While the steep decline can be attributed to the lengthy
lockdown and the rising vaccination rates (as of today 76% of Ontarians aged 18
plus have received a first shot and almost 20% have had two shots) there is
also the effect of seasonality. Much like last summer, warmer weather and more
people being outdoors has helped slow transmission.
Note that the second wave peaked in early winter and the drop was not as
pronounced as what we are experiencing currently because we are mainly indoors
in the December to March period of the year. As for the lengthy protracted lockdowns,
it will be interesting to see what the retrospective analysis will be like on
their actual effectiveness.
Of course, data will be a challenge and as we all know in
Canada data on the pandemic from the outset has been less
than optimal. Governments at both the federal and provincial level are
hoping to declare victory and move on hoping that we all forget the chaos of
coordination of data, response and most recently vaccine distribution. Trying to snag a vaccine appointment in a
decentralized and chaotic system has made the process a veritable rodeo. It will be tempting to shrug one’s shoulders
and move on, but the most important lesson of the pandemic is to learn from the
pandemic. If we simply do what we did in the wake of SARS two decades ago - study, plan and ignore - what is the
point?
As for Thunder Bay District, Figure 2 illustrates that after
the initial onset of the pandemic in spring of 2020 which produced a very small
first wave, we had a long period of relative inactivity until mid-November of
2020 when our second wave began, and it never really ended until recently. We had a long second wave that peaked in
early March of 2021 and then began to decline and bottomed out in mid-April. We have not gone to zero cases but have
instead since mid-April been averaging 5 to 6 cases daily. Our active case count is down and in recent
days most of the cases have been outside the City of Thunder Bay, but the
infection is still there percolating quietly.
So, is this it? Is the pandemic over? With rising vaccination rates, it is tempting
to see this as the last wave. However,
there are caveats. Full vaccinations
need to continue to rise as herd immunity requires anywhere from 75 to 85
percent of the population getting two doses. However, even once fully
vaccinated, it does not mean that new variants might not come along that can
overcome vaccines. And there will be no
doubt a need for boosters at some point.
In addition, the steep decline is a function of the warmer weather and
the real test will come this fall. In
the before time, the return to indoor activity in September was always marked
by a resurgence of colds and flus and asthma with a peak usually hitting the
third week of September. If reasonable precautions
such as continued masking are maintained, this should not be a problem. Still,
it will be difficult to sort out colds from flus from COVID this fall. While
things should be much more normal, it will probably not be as normal as we
would like.
