"That's Not The Way It Works"

"It's a love-hate relationship [use of the phrase 'second wave'] with epidemiologists and modellers. I don't like to use the term myself -- but I find myself using it. It's so easy to go to."

"We didn't have to have a second wave. There's not a second wave in Manhattan. There isn't a second wave in New Zealand. There isn't a second wave in China."

"It  didn't sweep through the community because we were able to stop it. But now we've let off, and it's coming back."

"Businesses have been doing great. It's not the businesses that are going to shut things down. It's the other stuff. Because we haven't been able to maintain physical distancing in our social situations."

"As the cases get higher we're going to lose one of our most effective interventions for control: testing and contact tracing."

Dr.Doug Manuel, professor, School of Epidemiology and Public Health, The Ottawa Hospital

"The reason we don't talk about waves is that it implies there is something innate about the disease that  makes it cyclical. And it isn't."

"The reason it goes up and down is because human behaviour goes up and down. If you say we're in a second wave, people will think they just have to wait it out and the wave will diminish on its own. That's not the way it works."

"This [the rise in number of COVID cases] is pretty much 100 per cent driven by human behaviour,"

"The disease never went away, it's always been in certain people even during the summer when the numbers were low. It's just that the transmission rate went down because people were [not] congregating closely enough to be infected."

"Now we're congregating again, schools are opening, people are going to parties, it's cold, we're huddling inside a bit more and as a result the opportunity for transmission is happening and that results in more infections."

Dr.Raywat Deonandan, epidemiologist, associate professor, University of Ottawa

People walk, ride bikes and inline skate along Queen Elizabeth Driveway in Ottawa on May 3. (Justin Tang/Canadian Press)

 

The 'second wave' of infections of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 is driven -- quite simply -- by community transmission when extended families decide to have a gathering, at private parties, at funerals and at weddings; in short, important events in peoples' lives that they consider sufficiently vital to relax common sense and the rules that it supports during this time of a global pandemic that has swept the emotional longing for family contact off the immediate-attention shelf onto a back shelf of 'in good time' -- and this is not a good time.

Canada has managed -- against its best and most fervent wishes to avoid it -- to arrive at the milestone of 150,000 cases, and with those cases came over 9,200 deaths from COVID. There is no comfort to be had in these numbers. Canada is placed away back in ratings of COVID control, with its 3,900 cases and 244 deaths per million. The country ranks 17th and 25th in respective order in those two key areas among the 37 OECD countries; nothing whatever to brag about. Canada's central government set a poor example for its citizens when it decided to wind down threat-monitoring of COVID months earlier.

 

And the federal government's generosity in deciding early on to ship off huge amounts of PPE to China, shrugging off the idea of risks related to the pandemic in Canada, while downplaying the need to close borders, much less  wear masks, all of which produced a national set-back, while setting a poor example for citizens at large. When Canadian health authorities finally came around to changing their minds on masks and social distancing, people for the most part, complied as the case numbers rose and hospitals were in a frenzy of anticipation whether they could cope with a massive influx of seriously COVID-impacted patients.

 

Summer offered a respite when cases dwindled and heads of government and health agencies relaxed the rules. But the basics like social isolation but for a select 'bubble', and face masking in indoor spaces were to be maintained as a cautionary measure. The public, particularly those in their teens to 40s, chafed at the interruption of their social lives and that's when the infection rates began climbing again, and the 'second wave' speculation commenced, adducing the growing cases to the virus alone, bypassing the responsibility of those who surrendered theirs.

 

When infections rose in France and Spain in mid-August, epidemiologists linked that to increased socialization caused by people dropping their guard against COVID transmission. The Ottawa region and the province itself are poised to repeat the resurgence of COVID infections seen by France and Spain. Ottawa Public Health had reported many days in the summer months with no infections occurring -- until the numbers began to steadily rise; slowly then accelerating, from 40 to 60 to 90 daily. 

The city, warned its medical officer of health, Dr.Vera Etches, was nearing the "red zone", causing her to invoke the Health Protection Act imposing fines on those failing to self isolate. Ottawa Public Health mere days earlier had traced the source of dozens of infections to a social event that ultimately was responsible for the closure of two daycares and of placing ten people in hospital. The spread of this upward trend is rapid enough to make contact tracing and testing a real problem for public health.

The situation in contact tracing has gone from a positive case involving on average two close contacts early in the pandemic to the current situation where instead of being able to make contact with 98 percent of contacts within a 24-hour period, each positive case averages over five close contacts with public health nurses now able to reach fewer than 60 percent within 24 hours. Dr.Deonandan warns that deaths are set to rise, given the younger demographic between 20 to 40 years of age who represent most of the new cases and who pass the virus to older, more vulnerable people.

"Deaths are a lagging indicator. We won't see the deaths for another two weeks", he cautioned. "Really, the message is just, 'Don't socialize'. It sounds horrible, but  you've got to fight that urge. We talk about waves, people expect something innate to be part of the virus, like a fall seasonal pattern. And as well, you figure you wait out the wave, you ride the wave until it's over. That's not how it works."

 

Covid Testing

 

"The numbers go down because we did something. We went inside, we distanced, we wore masks. The numbers are going up again because we're out again and we're not following the protocols as closely as we could or should and they will continue to go up until we do something else."