Peel’s top public health official says that it is “a little early” to conclude that the fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic has plateaued given the return of students to classrooms just last week and the unknown effect that will have on case counts.

Ontario’s rolling seven-day average of new cases decreased marginally over the last week and now stands at 722. The province’s science advisory table also pegs the reproductive number at 0.99, which would suggest that the pandemic is no longer worsening.

But during a briefing at Brampton City Hall on Wednesday Peel’s Medical Officer of Health Dr. Lawrence Loh warned residents that it would be premature to conclude that the worst of the fourth wave is behind us given the “very large shift” that has taken place with the reopening of schools for the first time since last April.

There have, in fact, already been hundreds of school-related cases reported by the Ministry of Education with dozens of classes moved to remote learning as a result.

“We're continuing to monitor very closely, but as you know we had a very large shift in the community just last week with the reopening of schools and the school community and the return of many people from outside the city where they might have otherwise gone elsewhere for summer. So I think it's a little early for us to be to be looking for trends and the plateau,” Loh cautioned. “I am hopeful that if everyone continues to get two doses of vaccine and continues to practice precautions with the masking, the distancing, keeping gatherings small and outdoors and really trying to limit time in large crowds or crowded into public spaces that we will hopefully be able to get our context to what the Ontario science table says we need to really mitigate the impacts of a fourth wave (90 per cent of the eligible population vaccinated).”

Mu variant not posing a significant threat

Modelling released earlier this month had warned that Ontario was facing a “substantial” fourth wave of the pandemic and could see daily case counts reach 9,000 by October in a worst-case scenario.

But it also said that Ontario could see the fourth wave begin to subside so long as residents reduced their contacts from 83 per cent of pre-pandemic levels to where they were back in June and July – about 70 per cent.

It is too soon to say whether that has happened but during his briefing on Wednesday Loh did say that he remains confident that “brighter days are certainly ahead.”

He also said that the Mu variant, which has prompted some concern because of limited data suggesting that vaccines may be less effective against it, does not appear to be a “significant threat” at this time as virtually all new cases continue to involve the Delta variant.

The World Health Organization declared the Mu variant, first detected in Colombia, a variant of interest in August. So far 29 cases involving the Mu variant have been discovered in Peel.

“I liken it to this: you can build the build the coolest car in the world but if you can only build one of them and someone else is able to build 50 million other cars, you might be concerned about that one car more but the reality is that what you're going to see on the road is going to be something totally different,” Loh said.