The Omicron COVID-19 variant spreads like wildfire and Ontario scientists smell smoke. The government and people must act faster, they say, or the province will catch alight, creating cause for another lockdown.
Omicron is so contagious, Dr. David Juurlink, head of clinical pharmacology and toxicology at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, told the Star he believes everyone will eventually become infected with it.
“I fully expect to contract this variant in the next couple of months,” he said, despite being triple-vaccinated.
Dr. Peter Juni, scientific director for Ontario’s COVID-19 Science Advisory Table, said he believes people without boosters will get infected. And even with a booster, infection is still quite possible.
“If you have only had two doses, or one dose, or you are unvaccinated, you will get it (Omicron),” he said.
“If you don’t have really high antibodies, from a recent infection or a recent third dose, you will get infected. Even infections in people with three doses will happen. If the third dose is recent, you will have relatively OK protection, something like 75 per cent (from Omicron) as compared with about 93 per cent from Alpha. And that’s a very preliminary number, taken from very little data.”
By the end of the year, according to one expert, Ontario could see 10,000 Omicron infections per day — more than double the current daily case record set on the crest of the third wave in April.
This exponential growth in transmission could push hospital capacity beyond the brink. And if enough health care workers get sick at the same time, hospitals might not be able to provide care.
“Here’s a real frightening scenario: health-care workers, by the thousands, finding themselves infected with Omicron and having to stay away from work in large numbers while they quarantine,” Juurlink said.
“It would be a nightmare. It would have huge impacts on care being delivered in hospitals, particularly seniors’ homes.”
Omicron is unprecedented, a mutant far more resistant to vaccination than its forebears. Two doses of a COVID vaccine, or antibodies from a previous COVID infection, are now believed to do little to prevent its transmission. A third dose offers better — though not complete — protection, but most will be ineligible for another shot until early January.
The one glimmer of hope is that Omicron has not yet been observed to be deadlier or create more health complications than other variants. And experts believe partial or full vaccination greatly prevents dangerous symptoms from developing after infection.
Bradly Wouters, executive vice-president of science and research at the University Health Network in Toronto, said third doses must arrive sooner than January.
“We’ve been too slow on this,” he said. “In the summer there were days we were giving out 250,000 (vaccine doses) a day. It’s possible to do that again, but there would need to be the will to do it, to set up mass-vax clinics and find people to run them.”
The province needs quicker reflexes, Wouters said, because Omicron is like lightning. He and other experts have observed that the number of Omicron cases is now doubling about every three days.
About 15 per cent of people currently infected with COVID in Ontario are sick with the Omicron strain. At this rate, Omicron will make up 100 per cent of new cases in the GTA by Christmas Day, according to Jim Woodgett, director of research at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute in Toronto.
“It won’t take long for (Omicron) to completely overtake Delta and create very, very high numbers,” said Wouters. “Unless we take drastic public health measures to control spread, there’s no reason to think we won’t see a lot more people getting infected.”
Drastic measures don’t mean another lockdown, Wouters said. Rather, that would be the outcome if they are not taken.
“Our society is not ready for another lockdown,” he said. “Nobody wants that. It’s a very blunt tool you use if you have no other options. We could be smarter about it this time. But the government waits until January, it may find itself in a position where it has no other option.”
Being smarter means getting third doses out as fast as possible, asking the public to limit gatherings and subsidizing rapid COVID tests to the point where they are ubiquitous, and every household has a drawerful so its members can test themselves before going out.
“Rapid tests have been massively underused,” said Wouters. “In most parts in Europe, you can pick them up at a drugstore for a dollar. People stock their bathrooms with them.” (Rapid tests are available in Toronto pharmacies for between $30 and $40.)
Rapid test prices are free or cheap across Europe and in parts of the U.S. and Canada because governments take on the cost. Saskatchewan offers free take-home rapid tests for free to the public and Nova Scotia hands test kits out to residents at pop-up locations.
If the government of Ontario started doing the same, and people in the province started regularly testing themselves before going to work or gatherings, Wouters said the threat of Omicron would be diminished.
Still, getting booster shots out expeditiously is the best defence against the variant. Canada is one of the lucky countries with the capacity to do that. To Wouters, this highlights the world’s vaccine inequity, which is prolonging the pandemic. Mutations like Omicron spring from developing countries without sufficient vaccine infrastructure. They spread from there to the entire world within weeks.
“This variant is likely from a part of the world that was under-vaccinated,” he said. “This is a global problem — you need to vaccinate the world to protect everyone. We need a more concerted effort to scaleup vaccine manufacturing and access in developing countries. We can slow the spread in Canada, but this virus is not going away if we can’t control it globally.”
Boosters, rapid tests and limited gatherings: Experts say Omicron is spreading fast and it’s time to act - Toronto Star
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