Ontario has entered a summer wave of COVID-19 as hospitalization and sewage data slowly rises, infectious disease experts say.
“We are in one. It’s the real deal. I don’t know how big it’s going to be, but it’s here,” Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease specialist from Toronto, told CTV News Toronto on Monday.
Bogoch points to COVID-19 wastewater data as a central indicator. Throughout June, this data has been increasing. It follows a sharp drop in viral activity discovered in Ontario sewage through most of the spring.
Along with sewage, Bogoch points to an increase in the number of people testing positive for COVID-19. While testing is limited, the seven-day average of new cases detected through PCR tests rose 34 percent week over week in the most recent data from the province.
“That’s been a very reliable indicator, although we’re not testing extensively,” Bogoch said. “At least we’re testing consistently.”
He said hospitalizations, which are a lagging indicator of the spread of COVID-19, are also seeing an increase. the latest data The government said there are 585 people in Ontario hospitals who have tested positive for the virus, up from 486 the previous week.
“This is largely due to Omicron’s BA.5 sublineage. We know that it is probably the dominant variant right now in most of Canada. And it has the ability to bypass some of the protective immunity that we would get from vaccination or recovery from infection,” he said.
In May, Dr. Kieran Moore, the province’s medical director of health, predicted a “low level of endemic activity” during the summer, followed by increased transmission in the fall due to increased indoor activities. But since then, BA.5, the subvariant with the fastest growing rate, has spread rapidly in Ontario.
Dr. Sumon Chakrabarti, an infectious disease specialist in Mississauga, said while BA. 5 has largely taken over the country, it is worth noting the timing of this wave.
“In the summer, the health system is much better equipped to deal with this and absorb it,” he said.
Compared to the Omicron wave in December, Chakrabarti said he doesn’t expect to see the same magnitude.
“We just have to remember the nature of respiratory viruses, especially when they become a little more transmissible and they become more immune to evasion. A balance forms between the community and the virus and you see this ripple activity,” Chakrabarti explained.
“This wave is going to be different and not have the same kind of intensity as the previous ones.”
Speaking to CP24 on Monday afternoon, the scientific director of the Ontario COVID-19 Scientific Advisory Board did not confirm that Ontario was specifically in another wave of the pandemic, saying only that “the virus has proven to be a really terrible adversary “.
“It has mutated to the point where what is currently circulating in Ontario, Canada and the world is almost unrecognizable compared to what we originally saw,” said Dr. Fahad Razak. “What happens in the future is not very clear.”
“The fall is going to be a high-risk period for us though, because it’s not just COVID. It’s the other respiratory viruses like influenza, RSV, so we need to be aware of that,” he said.
Razak urged residents to continue receiving their COVID-19 vaccine to better protect themselves from the virus.