ICYMI - Lockdown and release: Ontario's imperfect wall against COVID-19 is about to be severely tested
What went wrong? What can Canada do to fix it before the next wave hits? This look at how one of Canada’s worst-hit provinces lost control of the coronavirus and its plans to re-open is part of the Post’s ongoing Lessons from a Pandemic series.
But as a first, imperfect, layer, physical distancing worked. It bought the province time: to shore up hospitals, to secure protective equipment, to expand testing and contact tracing. It gave the province space to prepare for what experts believe will be an 18-24-month fight against the virus in the community. It gave them time to build that imperfect wall. The question now is whether the government put all that time, and all that sacrifice from businesses and families, to good effect.
Within that four-pillar plan, there are two states: lockdown and release. And broadly speaking, there are two measures to judge whether any jurisdiction is ready to move from one to the next.“Number one overall we want to see that the epidemic curve — which is looking at number of new cases per day — is actually on a downward trend,” said Todd Coleman, an epidemiologist at Wilfrid Laurier University, “and preferably, with something like this, closer to zero than what we’re actually seeing now.
At the beginning of the pandemic, Ontario, like many jurisdictions, was unprepared to conduct the volume of testing required to keep a viral pandemic under control. Part of that lack of preparation, experts believe, was out of the province’s hands. There was a worldwide shortage of the equipment and supplies necessary to conduct tests for COVID-19. But part of it, too, was local.
In practice, that would look something like opinion polling for a virus. You need to test random slices of the community, in all different parts of the province, to monitor the spread. “If we’re not doing this, we’re acting blindly,” said. Deonandan. “We’re throwing money and resources just willy nilly.”
The province has a stated goal that 90 per cent of all relevant contacts of a confirmed case should be reached by a public health unit within 24 hours of a positive test. Public officials this week said that “most” local units are now reaching that goal, and that many that aren’t, are at least getting close.
Even if everything goes perfectly with the contact tracing process, meanwhile, the system can still break down. Right now, Ontario is only testing contacts of a known COVID-19 case if and when a person shows symptoms. Ideally, that shouldn’t matter much for the individual; known contacts are told to isolate for 14 days whether they’re feeling sick or not. But in the real world, it can make a huge difference. Humans are humans, not data points.
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