Head of science table says he won't support further easing of COVID-19 restrictions right now

The head of Ontario’s science advisory table says that he will not support any further easing of public health measures given the recent rise in case counts driven by the more infectious Delta variant.

The Ford government has said that it plans to lift virtually all remaining restrictions, including capacity limits, once it reaches a handful of vaccination targets – 80 per cent of those eligible with one dose, 75 per cent of those eligible with both doses and at least 70 per cent of eligible residents fully vaccinated in all 34 public health units.

But during an interview with CP24 on Wednesday, the scientific director of the science table Dr. Peter Juni seemed to suggest that some of the restrictions could remain in place due to arrival of what he says is clearly a fourth wave of the pandemic.

His comments come after Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Kieran Moore suggested that the province could hit the targets required for a more wide scale reopening within seven to 10 days.

Moore, however, did not actually commit to lifting the restrictions which are also tied to other public health indicators, such as case counts and hospitalization numbers.

“Right now just looking at everything and talking to my colleagues we can’t see any further reopening considering that our effective reproduction number is at 1.5,” Juni said on Wednesday. “We need to be very careful that we don’t have further explosive growth.”

COVID-19 infections have been on the rise for weeks now and Juni said that case counts are now doubling every 10 to 14 days with transmission largely concentrated in unvaccinated populations.

He said that while there is “no need to panic” at this point given that a rise in cases was somewhat inevitable following the reopening of many businesses, there is a need for caution.

He said that this is especially true in school and child care settings, where children under 12 remain unvaccinated.

“We see signals in the U.S. which are not reassuring (a rise in pediatric admissions at hospitals) and it may be that we will find out you know in a few weeks or months that children have also an increased risk of more severe COVID coming (from Delta),” he said. “This means right now have to try to keep schools as safe as we for those below the age of 12 who didn't have an opportunity to get vaccinated, meaning all the parents should get vaccinated, all the school staff should get vaccinated and we can't you know just let case numbers grow too high because if you have a lot of community transmission you eventually are going to introduce transmission into schools.”

Schools slated to reopen in the fall

The Ford government has said that it plans to allow all school-aged children to return to classes five days a week in September, though remote learning still has to be offered as an alternative.

Juni, however, said that the province will have to monitor things very carefully to ensure that the “really scary” challenges being seen in some U.S. states experiencing a surge in pediatric cases and hospitalizations don’t present themselves here.

In Florida, for example, a total of 135 children were being treated for COVID-19 in hospitals as of earlier this week and dozens of new admissions are being reported on a daily basis.

In an interview with CP24 on Wednesday, the medical director of critical care at Michael Garron Hospital Dr. Michael Warner said that while there hasn’t been a significant uptick in COVID-19 hospitalizations in Ontario so far he is becoming increasingly concerned that one could be on the horizon.

“You know how quickly we reopen the economy is not my decision and I really have no opinion on that. My concern is that the reason why the economy slowed down and shut down is because the hospitals were overrun with COVID patients and right now the government wants us to catch up with the surgical backlog and they want us to work at 110 to 115 per cent capacity to do an extra 67,000 surgeries," he said. "We would love to do that but if we have COVID patients in the hospital and staff redeployed and operating rooms closed the silent pandemic of non COVID related care delayed and deferred will continue and patients will continue to suffer at home, sustainable school reopening will be imperiled and the economic progress we've made so far will also be at risk.”

According to Juni, people who are unvaccinated will have an 80 to 90 per cent risk of contracting COVID-19 over the next six to 12 months due to the increased infectiousness of the Delta variant.