Quebec should hold off on lifting mask mandates: experts

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With Quebec reassessing its plan to lift mask mandates in a week and a half, experts urged the government to keep them in place.

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“I think there is no problem in continuing the mask mandate,” said Dr. Catherine Hankins, co-chair of Canada’s COVID-19 Immunity Task Force and professor of medicine in McGill University’s department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health.

“My own personal advice that I give quite strongly to anyone who asks me is wearing a mask. What’s the big deal? It protects you and it protects other people,” she added.

Interim public health director Luc Boileau is expected to announce Monday whether Quebec will postpone the lifting of mask mandates planned for April 15, now that the province is officially in a sixth wave.

Not only should the government keep mask mandates — it should reinstate them in schools, said Dr. Donald Vinh, an infectious-diseases specialist and medical microbiologist at the McGill University Health Center (MUHC).

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Quebec schools saw a 75-per-cent jump in pandemic-related absences last week, the Education Department reported.

The ending of the mask mandate in schools on March 7 has helped drive up cases throughout the population, Vinh said.

“It’s because of the acquisition of COVID in the community, especially from school-age children,” he said.

While many cases appear to be mild, that’s not because the BA.2 sub-variant is milder than previous variants but because of the high level of immunity in the population, Hankins said.

“Vaccines don’t prevent transmission, but you’re much less likely to end up in hospital and with a severe outcome,” she said.

“It’s milder because people are already vaccinated or they’ve had previous infections. It’s not like it’s actually evolving somehow to weaken,” Hankins said.

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The province should act decisively to promote the booster shot among young age groups, Vinh said.

Only 34 per cent of Canadians age 18 to 29 have had the third dose, while among those age 30 to 39, the rate was 42 per cent, according to an update Friday by the Public Health Agency of Canada.

“You need three doses to be able to protect yourself,” Vinh said.

The number of patients hospitalized for the virus rose by 28 to 1,350, Quebec reported Sunday.

Of those, 72 were in intensive care — five more than the day before.

The number of patients hospitalized the previous Sunday was 1,088.

Seven more COVID-19-related deaths were reported Sunday, bringing Quebec’s death toll since the start of the pandemic to 14,404.

A further 2,581 cases of COVID-19 were confirmed through PCR testing at government clinics. Since that form of testing is off limits to most Quebecers, the numbers are just the tip of the iceberg.

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The seven-day rolling average of new cases identified through PCR testing has now climbed back up to 2,714, up from a recent low of 1,062 in mid-March.

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