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The stream of people, all masked, snaked through the old Sears store in Devonshire Mall.
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There were hundreds of people, young, old, some with a cane or in a wheelchair.
The destination: row after row of cubicles where they rolled up their sleeves to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
It was like a vaccine assembly line.
“Hit me with your best shot,” someone had written on a chalkboard, taking a line from the Pat Benatar song.
I was in that line on Wednesday and it gave me hope.
The situation is dire. There is no way around that.
“We are currently tracking to have more cases per day than we have had,” Ontario Medical Director of Health Dr. Kieran Moore said in a briefing on Tuesday.
The number of cases is increasing exponentially. Omicron is the dominant strain and is four to eight times more contagious than the Delta variant. There are an increasing number of cases even in fully vaccinated people.
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Even if Omicron causes less severe illness than Delta, which has not been confirmed, the sheer number of infections is expected to produce illness severe enough to overwhelm hospitals.
Windsor Regional Hospital has opened a COVID-19 unit. Expecting to lose up to 30 percent of its staff to infection, it is creating “backup copies of the backup copies,” Chief of Staff Dr. Wassim Saad said in a briefing on Wednesday. .
No one thought that we would be in this position 21 months after the first hit of COVID-19.
But this is also true: “I can tell you unequivocally that we are in a much better place now than before,” Saad said.
By far the main reason is vaccines. A year ago on Wednesday, Krystal Meloche, a 38-year-old personal support worker, received the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine in Windsor and Essex counties.
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“That was a very momentous occasion,” Saad said. “It ushered in a new way to fight this pandemic and it really changed the course of how we handle the pandemic.”
There was, and still is, an unprecedented massive effort to put the doses to arms. Public health officials, hospitals, paramedics, family doctors, pharmacies, municipalities, the faculty and the university came together to achieve this. Ice rinks, gyms, community centers, the university’s School of Social Work were transformed into clinics that could immunize thousands of people a day. Even city buses were turned into mobile clinics.
More than 725,000 doses have been injected into the arms of more than 340,000 people between the ages of five and 95.
Vaccines are not 100 percent effective. We knew that. But they dramatically reduced the risk of serious illness and death.
“Those admitted to the hospital and ICU changed dramatically after our massive vaccination effort,” Saad said.
“I think when we are going through something as traumatic as a global pandemic … it is important to mark these milestones so that they remind us of where we were a year ago and where we are now,” he said.
Now, we are racing to provide booster shots to as many people as possible as quickly as possible to fight Omicron.
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We also now know that the virus spreads through the transmission of aerosols or tiny droplets that can hang in the air. And that informs which public health measures work best: properly fitted medical masks, physical distance, and adequate ventilation.
We have also started using faster antigen tests to find positive cases earlier, before those people infect others. Windsor Regional has been using them since August. They have had at least 20 “salvage” cases that were detected before the virus could spread.
And now we know more about how to treat COVID-19. The US Food and Drug Administration also approved the first pill for COVID-19 on Wednesday, calling it “a huge step forward.”
Called Paxlovid, by Pfizer, the antiviral has been shown to reduce hospitalization and death by 88 percent.
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The biggest concern is the health system.
“We are tense,” Saad said. “Everyone who works in the hospital, works in health care, has been pushed to the limit all year long.”
That is why we must vaccinate as many people as we can as quickly as possible. Omicron is expected to destroy the 50,000 people here who are not vaccinated, and that will overwhelm the health care system.
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But this pandemic will end, Canada’s director of public health Dr. Theresa Tam said in a briefing on Monday.
“Every pandemic runs its course,” he said.
It will be a “bumpy ride” this winter, he warned. But we have vaccines, public health measures, tests and treatment.
So yes, the situation is serious, but there is hope. Use it to fortify yourself against the difficult weeks ahead and to find joy wherever you can this Christmas.
Reference-windsorstar.com