'Disaster' scenario predicted by science table in February now becoming reality, co-chair says
Adalsteinn Brown, co-chair of the province’s science advisory table, says given the current rate of growth in COVID-19 cases in Ontario, it would take very strict public health measures and as many as 300,000 vaccinations a day to significantly flatten the curve by the end of June.
Cases of the illness are rising in most of the province's 34 public health units, and the province-wide test positivity rate has climbed to 7.9 per cent. That figure is higher than 10 per cent in Toronto, Peel and York regions.
Charting out Ontario's current trajectory — with what Brown describes as "moderate" public health restrictions in place for four weeks, along with approximately 100,000 vaccines administered per day — Ontario could see more than 10,000 new cases per day by late May, and 15,000 by late June.
The pace of vaccinations is simply not enough on its own to contain increasing transmissions of the virus, he continued.
Growth in ICU numbers 'baked in' for 2 weeks
Hospitalizations and ICU levels are also at all-pandemic highs, "compromising care" for all Ontarians and causing the backlog of surgeries and procedures to grow, said Brown.
"Notice that our hospitals can no longer function normally. They are bursting at the seams, we are setting up field hospitals," he said, alluding to a field hospital in the parking lot at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto.
"Our children's hospitals are admitting adults. This has never happened in Ontario before. It's never happened in Canada before."
Many intensive care units in particularly hard-hit areas of the province were never able to fully recover from the second wave of the pandemic that peaked in January, Brown added. They are now approaching a breaking point.
Under any scenario, ICU admissions are expected to top 800 in the coming weeks. With only the current measures in place, admissions will still likely exceed 1,000, Brown said. Continued impacts for critical care units are now "baked in" for at least two weeks given growth in overall cases.
Where Ontario went wrong after Christmas
Part of the problem, Brown explained, is that Ontario began easing public health measures during the brief lull between the second and third waves of the pandemic. During this time, the prevalence of variants of concern — which are more transmissible and increase the risk of both hospitalization and death — exploded.
The science table reported as early as late January that if the spread of variants was not brought under control, Ontario was facing a potential "disaster" scenario. Revised projections published in March built on those concerns, forecasting up to 8,000 cases per day by the end of April if action was not taken.
