Until there is a better understanding of how prevalent the faster spreading variant strains of COVID-19 are in our communities, any move out of restrictive lockdown measures could be “rather catastrophic,” according to York Region’s medical officer of health.
“The reason for my cautiousness is because the stakes are very high here,” Dr. Karim Kurji told regional councillors this morning prior to their discussion of a motion that would request Premier Doug Ford not to extend the grey zone lockdown and stay at home order when they are set to expire Feb. 9.
If the variant becomes the dominant strain in the region, “you would be looking at a situation, where we would be — no question about it — into a third wave at a time when our vaccines haven’t rolled out. This would be a rather catastrophic situation for us all,” Kurji said.
Public Health Ontario only began screening every positive COVID-19 test sample for the variant as of Feb 3, he said, so additional data is not yet available.
Laboratory results for the genome sequencing required to confirm the variant strains take longer to process.
He suggested an additional week to 10 days is required to assess the impact of the variants.
“If we get it wrong, it will be very difficult to roll back,” Kurji said.
York Region currently has five active cases of the U.K. variant, which reached a total of 39 within weeks, and Kurji said he is anticipating additional cases.
Hospitals are “already struggling” with record levels of hospitalizations and ICU units are at capacity, Kurji said.
“There is no question in my mind that the only way that the province is able to cope is by distributing hospitalizations across the province,” he added.
Until recently, Kurji said he had wanted to recommend to the province that the region move into “a red zone plus” with some additional restrictions in place for businesses, because daily case numbers and other metrics, including reproductive values and incidence rates, continue to decline.
As of yet, there have been no formal discussions with the province’s chief medical officer of health regarding reopenings, Kurji said.
UPDATE: York Region defeats motion calling for end of lockdown
“This is definitely your most sobering report to us throughout this pandemic,” Newmarket Mayor John Taylor said, adding he would not make the motion he had prepared to allow small businesses to open by appointment.
“You're asking us be more cautious and I’m going to follow your advice,” he said.
York Region Public Health’s special COVID-19 variant unit is “aggressively” managing the cases, which may mitigate additional transmissions, Kurji said.
Screening at international borders may also be effective in reducing the variant cases.
“The stay at home order has likely had a great effect in terms of reducing the transmission of COVID-19 cases in our community, and I would hope that with that it had to have reduced the transmission of the variant,” he added.
Given the presence of the variant, the public health unit has introduced “tougher” screening tools at schools for when they reopen Feb. 16, Kurji said.
“Generally speaking, our schools have been safe,” he said, because multiple layers of protection are in place, including isolation of cohorts when a positive test is received.
The majority of student and staff cases of COVID-19 have been acquired in the community, and are not being transmitted within schools, he added.
Modelling done by Markham-based Scarsin for York Region projects if the variant strain accounted for even 30 per cent of COVID-19 cases by the end of March, the number of cases would be higher than those reached during the second wave, Kurji said.
If the variant becomes the dominant strain here, as it has in other countries, the proportion of cases could be above 60 per cent, he added.
In general, vaccine coverage of at least 70 per cent is required to build herd immunity, however, if the variant becomes the dominant strain, vaccination rates of around 85 per cent would be needed to develop herd immunity.
In York Region long-term care homes, only about 50 to 69 per of staff have volunteered to accept the vaccine, however, more than 90 per cent of residents have been accepting the vaccine, Kurji said.
