Ontario is likely seeing upwards of 100,000 new cases of COVID-19 each day, with roughly five per cent of its residents currently infected, the head of the province’s science table says.
But as of Wednesday morning, there were 1,074 people in Ontario hospitals with COVID-19, with the strain on the health-care system showing no signs of easing anytime soon.
“BA.2 is a bit more transmissible than the original Omicron for sure, but what we are doing, and this is in line with the provincial communication, people just have charged their behaviour dramatically,” Jüni said. “So it doesn’t correspond to what we presumed in our last projections when we assumed a moderate change in behaviour.”
Premier Doug Ford has insisted that the uptick in COVID-19 activity is not unexpected given the lifting of many public health restrictions and has expressed confidence that Ontario’s hospitals will be able to manage the increased patient volumes.Some epidemiologists have, however, warned that the rapid rise in transmission could put vulnerable individuals at risk and ultimately lead to avoidable deaths.
They have also questioned whether there are sufficient health-care resources to staff the extra beds the province has claimed it has created. “Mask up. We are not through this yet. This wave will go high. It doesn’t mean we will see the same amount of hospitalizations necessarily, at least not if we have the same level of infection but remember we are still going up and we are already at the peak we were at last time,” Jüni warned on Wednesday.
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