These 3 Things Will Help Flatten The Omicron Curve, Says Head Of Ontario's Science Table
Lifting restrictions will lead to a "flare-up."
As Ontario continues its battle with the Omicron variant, with recent lockdown measures and capacity restrictions in effect, many have been left wondering what can help us get through this wave quicker.
Narcity spoke with Dr. Peter Juni, the scientific director of Ontario's COVID-19 Science Advisory table, who offered up some insight on how Ontario can flatten the curve of the highly transmissible Omicron variant and ease the strain on our healthcare system.
"So, when you think about what's happening right now, when we still could sort of assess our case counts, what we saw is that, on average, an infected person would cause an additional two infections," the scientific director says.
"That's not rocket science. This means if we reduce our contact path, then an infected person on average will infect just one additional person, and this means that we start to see flatline of our case counts."
According to Juni, there are three things to be done in order to get out of the current wave quickly.
"One is our decreased contacts in combination with the public health measures and the behaviour of people, that will be tremendously important," Juni says.
As of January 5, the Ford government trimmed social gathering sizes down to five people indoors and 10 people outdoors in response to the transmissibility of the Omicron variant. On top of that, gyms and indoor dining have been shut down to the public, too.
"The second is the rapid rollout of third doses, which will give us additional protection," Juni says.
Since December 20, all Ontarians 18 years and older have been able to sign up and get their booster doses. Fourth doses have even become available to more vulnerable populations, too.
Juni, however, thinks the province needs to keep going with its vaccination efforts when it comes to children between 5 to 11 years old. Based on the provincial government's current data, just over 50% have their first doses of COVID-19 vaccines, while 7.1% are fully vaccinated.
The last thing that will help flatten the curve concerns the virus itself.
"The third is, of course, the rapid spread of the virus will, in itself, contribute to the immunity of the population. And these three aspects together will hopefully relatively soon result in a flattening of the curve," Juni says.
So, even though the province doesn't look at COVID-19 case counts as an indicator of the current epidemiological situation in the province, Juni says that after Ontario sees a decline in cases, a week to ten days later the province will see the effects on hospital admissions and ICU occupancy.
But, as soon as restrictions lift, Juni predicts there will be a "flare-up."
"So what we need to do is we need to ride out this wave in a way that keeps being manageable for the healthcare system. At the end of the wave, nearly everybody [..] will have reached some sort of immunity is through vaccination through infection, or a combination of the two," Juni says.
"That's what will change the face of this pandemic. That's what will slow down the challenges we're having with [fewer] threats for the healthcare system."
As it stands, Ontario is set to lift the current restrictions on January 26, though Ontario's Chief Medical Officer of Health said he can't "guarantee" that it will happen.