As public health officials warned of the forthcoming fourth wave driven by delta mutations Coronavirus diseaseExperts say that its spread may be “very, very different” from previous waves in Canada.
Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Alan Tam issued a warning on Friday, noting that the number of cases across Canada is on the rise. Tan told reporters at a press conference that the long-term epidemic forecast of the Canadian public health agency “shows that we are at the beginning of the fourth wave of delta-driven.”
Tan warned that if the vaccination rate among the young population of the country does not increase, the cases may eventually exceed the capacity of the healthcare system in some communities.
The news was also released after a new CDC report and research, in which the former warned that the Delta COVID-19 variant may be as contagious as chickenpox, while the latter pointed out that even among vaccinated people, there will be a series of outbreaks. Of the epidemic.
However, according to Dr. Gerald Evans, head of the Department of Infectious Diseases at Queen’s University, despite the CDC’s report and the warnings of PHAC officials, the fourth wave of COVID-19 in Canada will be very different from the previous wave.
Evans said: “If we have a fourth wave, it will look very, very different from the previous waves.”
He said that just because Canada’s vaccination rate is still the highest in the world, the “impossible” wave will be as big as before.
Even if the number of cases in Canada increases, Evans said they will mainly appear in unvaccinated communities, noting that more than 97% of all new cases are unvaccinated people.
Canada added at least 218 cases of COVID-19 on Sunday, bringing its total number of infections to 1,431,219. According to reports, another two people died, and the country’s death toll is currently 26,600. More than 1.39 million people have recovered and received more than 49.5 million doses of vaccine.
However, the number of active cases across the country now seems to be increasing. There were 903 new cases on Thursday, 897 on Friday, and 531 on Saturday. In contrast, Canada recovered 391 cases on Thursday, 412 cases on Friday, and 190 cases on Saturday.
However, COVID-19 data is limited this weekend, and as of today, only Ontario and Quebec have reported new cases.
According to Evans, the CDC’s study of vaccinators who contracted COVID-19 after a major event actually provides stronger evidence of the effectiveness of the vaccine.
He said the main problem with the study is that the disease control agency did not report the denominator-the number of people who visited or traveled in the state during the study.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, from July 3 to 26, 469 cases were found among Massachusetts residents, of which 74% were fully vaccinated people.
Evans estimates that during that time, at least 100,000 people traveled and walked around in the state’s activities, and in such a large-scale event, only 469 reported cases are a better indicator of vaccine effectiveness. .
Second, Evans pointed out that the state’s vaccination rate is very high-at least 72% of the population in Massachusetts has received at least one dose of the vaccine, and more than 63% of the population is fully vaccinated, compared to the national average of 57.7% and They were 49.6%.
Talk about Roy Green Show, Dr. Ronald St. John, the former WHO Director of the Americas and Country Manager for SARS in Canada, expressed caution when explaining the findings of the CDC internal report, which pointed out that the Delta variant has the ability to spread like chickenpox.
He also pointed out that the data in the report has not been peer reviewed or published in scientific journals.
“I think they mean [Delta is spreading among] People who have not been vaccinated, but did not specify,” he said.
“The frequency of their dissemination, the frequency of dissemination-this is not clear from the data I have provided so far. I think this is just an internal document that has been disseminated. So I am waiting to see more data.”
According to Dr. Colin Furness, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto, the next wave will be “mainly experienced by unvaccinated people.”
In an earlier interview with “Global News”, he pointed out that vaccines are a “fire line” that can prevent the large-scale spread of the virus, hospitalization and serious consequences.
Furness said that unlike the previous large-scale outbreak of COVID-19 in Canada, they are now more likely to occur in unvaccinated people, who are “in groups.”
“They are not random, they are evenly distributed among the crowd. This is a church group. This is a nation. They are people in apartment buildings,” he said.
— Documents from Canadian media, Reuters, Eric Staub and Rachel Gilmore.
© 2021 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
