It may take “a few years” for COVID-19 to reach “low endemic rates” in Ontario: best doctor

Ontario’s top doctor said on Tuesday it may take “a few years” for COVID-19 to reach “low endemic rates” in the province.

Dr Kieran Moore made the remarks during a COVID-19 briefing at Queen’s Park.

A reporter asked Moore if COVID is “something we’re just going to have to learn to live with” and if it would ever go away.

Moore responded by saying that COVID-19 is a “global disease” and, as such, global vaccination needs to increase dramatically before virus levels drop dramatically.

“We have a long way to go with the World Health Organization and other international organizations to try to reduce the number of individuals in whom this virus can mutate and / or spread,” he said.

“In Canada and Ontario in particular, I see a day when we will have low endemic virus rates.”

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Moore said international surveillance will likely always be needed to monitor changes in COVID-19 strains.

“But I see a time when we will have low endemic rates and it will become like the flu or other winter respiratory viruses where there is seasonality, where it has an intermittent impact on our health system and like the flu you need an annual vaccine to protect yourself from it, ”he said.

Moore said it would be possible for the flu and COVID-19 vaccines to be combined to create an annual vaccine that offers protection “against whatever new strain is in circulation.”

“It may take a few years to see this low endemic rate, then the winter effect where the virus is most often active from November to March,” he said.

The World Health Organization previously told Global News that if a disease is “present in the world but at expected or normal levels” it would be considered endemic.

Moore said the goal is to limit the spread of COVID-19 and its impact on “mental, physical, social and economic well-being.”

He again repeatedly called on people to get the COVID-19 vaccine if they haven’t already, as it offers strong protection against serious illnesses.

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Experts who spoke to Reuters previously said they expected the first countries to emerge from the pandemic to have had a combination of high vaccination rates and natural immunity in people infected with the coronavirus, such as the United States, United Kingdom, Portugal and India.

But they warned that SARS-CoV-2 remains an unpredictable virus that mutates as it spreads in unvaccinated populations.

None would completely rule out what some have called a “doomsday scenario”, in which the virus mutates to the point that it evades hard-earned immunity. Still, they expressed growing confidence that many countries will have put the worst of the pandemic behind them in the coming year.

Meanwhile, the seven-day average of COVID-19 cases in Ontario continues to rise with 928 new cases reported on Tuesday. As of Tuesday, 687 cases were reported. The seven-day average has now reached 975, which is up from the previous week when it was 794.

Ontario’s COVID-19 Scientific Advisory Table released modeling on Tuesday indicating that COVID cases and intensive care admissions are expected to increase in the coming weeks.

The Ontario government has said it would not like to implement province-wide restrictions in the future and would instead like individual public health units to implement restrictions if necessary.

Ontario currently has a plan to lift nearly all public health restrictions by the end of March, according to COVID-19 trends.

– with files from Gabby Rodrigues, Saba Aziz and Reuters

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