the second wave: same, but different
it might feel like we are living april all over again, but there's a lot that has changed.
4 minute read
although today's numbers are starting to match the numbers of new daily cases in march and april, we should be better prepared the second time around
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after a bit of a drop during the summer, ontario has been seeing upwards of 600 new covid-19 cases each day. and while these numbers may be bringing back bad memories from april, when we were grappling with the impact of a virus no one seemed to understand, according to an ontario doctor, there are several reasons this “second wave” is different from those early days.
more daily cases in april
“there were probably a lot more cases back then that were not tested for and not reported, so the number of cases in april is probably significantly higher,” says dr. jennifer kwan, a burlington family physician. “even though the official number was 600, compared to now where we’re also at 600, our testing has improved.”
kwan has been tracking the numbers of new reported cases every day since march using her own graphs to help others understand why preventative public health measures are important to follow.
“it’s hard for us to understand numbers day-by-day, but seeing it in a graph helps us to visualize the impact and rise in the cases by hospitalizations and deaths,” she says.
now we can test and notify, but are we?
despite the fact that ontario’s testing capacity has expanded since the early days of the pandemic, the province has a backlog of 68,000 tests, which means today’s numbers are likely much higher than reported. new testing criteria does not recommend routine testing for asymptomatic people, which limits who can get a test will also lead to underreporting, plus, the long wait times in ontario makes it less likely people will go to get a test.
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the steep increases in community transmission have also overwhelmed public health systems to the point that many canadian cities have had to temporarily shut down contact tracing efforts, which means people are no longer being advised of potential exposure to the virus. and while the covid alert app helps people do their own contact tracing, only three million canadians so far have downloaded the app — it’s going to require a majority of the population to use the app for it to work.
kwan is also watching the percent-positive rate — which shows the percentage of positive covid tests. a high percentage, such as five per cent, means infection and community transmission is high and more testing should be done. it also shows that it’s time to add restrictions to slow the spread. anything higher than five per cent is considered too high, says the world health organization. in parts of toronto, some communities — particularly marginalized and low-income communities — are facing percent-positive rates as high as 11 per cent, reports the star.
another difference between now and april is that we are educated on preventative health measures such as physical distancing and wearing face masks, says kwan.
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“now that [protective measures are] more engrained in our behaviours, hopefully it can reduce the spread,” she says.
is another lockdown the answer?
while there has been speculation around another lockdown — and some areas of canada have taken steps backwards in order to stem rising covid-19 cases — kwan says that identifying the reasons behind rising numbers should come first.
“we do not want to be going into another lockdown unless things are severely out of control,” she says. “we should be using the knowledge gained from the first wave to target high-risk situations.”
kwan points to lack of distancing, and not wearing masks as reasons behind outbreaks — things that need to be clamped down upon if we are to reduce community transmission. she also calls for more staffing support at long-term care homes in order protect residents and avoid a repeat of the devastation seen early in the pandemic.
other processes that should be in place, according to kwan, include smaller class sizes to reduce spread of the virus in schools as well as the availability of rapid tests to alleviate the burden on lab processing. she points to local antigen tests that have been developed in halifax, such as sona nanotech’s antigen tests, and guelph, ontario’s precision biomonitoring.
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perhaps one of the biggest impacts of increasing covid-19 cases is the rising number of hospitalizations that risk overwhelming the healthcare system, adding to existing delays in patient care, she says. “it’s important for us to manage community transmission so that does not happen again.”
policy aside, kwan stresses the importance of following public health guidelines and looking out for each other.
“a lot of people are feeling anxious and afraid,” she says. “but we should be vigilant and careful and support one another through this.”
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