By Martin Cole.
Canada is inching closer to lifting lockdown measures and reopen indoor settings.
Canada has continued building on a gradual easing of its lockdown measures, as in person classes expands in Toronto and neighbouring Peel and York regions reopen
Medical experts, including a committee led by Toronto’s SickKids Hospital have called for schools to be the priority as the Ontario government decides when and how to bring the hardest-hit regions out of COVID-19 lockdown.
Montreal has been the epicentre of the pandemic in Quebec, non-essential businesses, including hair and beauty salons, will reopen.
“Efforts made over the past few weeks are paying off and a number of indicators are improving in Montreal,” said Montreal Health Director Mylene Drouin in a release from the city.
“However, the situation in the city remains fragile. We must stay vigilant, especially with the potential arrival of variants that spread more easily and until we can protect the most vulnerable populations through vaccination.”
Manitoba is closely considering reopening restaurants, gyms, places of worship, museums, art galleries, tattoo parlours, nail salons and libraries.
That variant, also known as B117, is estimated to be at least 50 per cent more transmissible and potentially more deadly and led to strict lockdowns in countries like Denmark, Ireland and the U.K., where it quickly became a dominant strain.
Alberta is already believed to have 149 cases of B117 and seven cases of the variant first identified in South Africa, also decided to reopen restaurants, bars and gyms this week despite the rapid rise in variant cases.
“It’s kind of like we’re playing chicken with COVID, which never struck me as being a great idea,” said Dr. Lynora Saxinger, an infectious diseases physician and an associate professor at the University of Alberta faculty of medicine in Edmonton.
“There’s been enough demonstrated risk from the variants being able to become dominant strains over a period of time in multiple jurisdictions that I would have preferred to hold steady and monitor for a period longer.”
Meanwhile, those variants have caused a surge in cases so rapid in Newfoundland and Labrador, the province has imposed new lockdown measures and cancelled in-person voting for today’s election.
Saxinger says she expect the number of variant cases will no doubt continue to grow as the economy reopens.
“Opening indoor dining is a mistake — plain and simple,” said Dr. Irfan Dhalla, a physician and University of Toronto medical professor who is also a vice-president at Unity Health Toronto.
“It’s pretty obvious that if we just went back to normal there would be a third wave and it would be absolutely brutal.”thing to do would be to go slow and see what happens after a few weeks.”
Quebec, a French province in Canada, has begun reopening businesses, museums, hair salons and malls even though gathering in them will not be permitted.
Ontario also began rolling back restrictions this week, lifting stay at home orders in much of the province, allowing for non-essential businesses and even ski hills to reopen, while committing to further loosening measures in the coming weeks.
“This is not the time to really begin pulling back on restrictions,” Dr. Gerald Evans, chair of infectious disease in the department of medicine at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont. said.
“Our expectation, when we look at the experience of other countries that have had that variant introduced, is we’re going to see a rise up in numbers and so you don’t want to complicate that by now suddenly rolling back restrictions.”
The decision to loosen restrictions in Ontario came at the same time health experts warned in a provincial scientific briefing that the spread of variants threatened to trigger a third wave of the pandemic, which could in turn lead to a third lockdown.
“We need to be watching how this unfolds and how it plays out before we make too many changes all at once,” said Dr. Susy Hota, an infectious disease specialist at the University Health Network and an associate professor of medicine at the University of Toronto.
“The overall numbers look to be going down, but these variants are emerging and they will likely emerge rapidly and our ability to control transmission might change with that.