Ontario heading into another COVID-19 wave, expert says

COVID-19 pandemic, one expert says.Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious diseases expert with University Health Network, said if you look around the province, and at “wastewater signals,” it is “pretty clear that there’s a growing burden of COVID in many communities across the province.”Bogoch said the “signals are very clear.”Data released on March 17 by the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table said the province’s wastewater signal had stopped declining and was increasing slightly.

The data also showed the province’s test positivity rate had stopped declining. Doug Ford says Ontario prepared to handle an increase in COVID cases, hospitalizations Bogoch said it’s difficult to know what the true daily case count is and what the seven-day average is due to lack of testing, but that “it’s pretty clear that there’s more COVID now than there was a week ago (or) two weeks ago.”“We’re in the very early part of a wave in not just Ontario, but also probably many other parts of the country,” he said. “What’s not quite clear is how big is this wave going to be, and how significantly will this impact us?”Bogoch said numbers such as hospitalizations and admissions to intensive care units are “delayed metrics.”“I don’t think anyone would be surprised if in a few days, or sometime next week we start to see a rise in hospitalizations as well, that corresponds with the rise in cases,” he said.“So stay tuned.

I mean, it’s clear that we’re in a wave, it’s just not quite clear how big this wave is going to be, and how significantly it’s going to impact us.”Bogoch said while we can’t stop a wave altogether, the tools we have used to weather previous surges during the pandemic will remain useful.That includes wearing masks and getting.