The Rush to Vaccinate -- It's The Variants

"This [rise of new COVID variant cases] is extremely, extremely unlikely just to be an undulation. The new variants of concern are now leading the epidemic curve."

"But this [that the new variant is more lethal] is not driving the number of deaths -- in the first place what drives the number of deaths is that this thing is more transmissible. It's much more important how many people get the disease."

"Other parts of the province are a bit delayed, so they might have one or two weeks longer. But every week counts."

"For the Golden Horseshoe, we're too late. The vaccines won't come early enough to help. We know what's coming is inevitable. The longer we wait [holding off on another lockdown], the more painful it gets. We are between a rock and a hard place."

Dr.Peter Juni, scientific director, COVID-19 Science Table Ontario 

 

"We need to be zeroing in 100 percent on the vaccine now because this is our saving grace."

"We are slow on the vaccines and we are quickly moving into the third wave. It's a colliding disaster."

Doris Grinspun, CEO, Ontario Registered Nurses' Association

"[In Toronto, COVID cases were plateauing], now they seem to be on the upswing."

"Do you define it as a third wave or not? You can get these kinds of up and down swings."

"But there's no question, the variants are on the rise, and if we see more cases you can expect to see [the associated]  hospitalizations and deaths -- except where people are vaccinated."

Dr.Vinita Dubey, Toronto associate medical officer of  health

The third COVID-19 vaccination clinic in the London area. (Mike Hensen/The London Free Press)

Complications where complications were anticipated. The impossible was achieved when -- instead of taking five years to tailor and create a new vaccine that would efficiently and safely protect populations around the world from the stealth approach and devastating effects of the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing COVID-19 to rescue the world from the talons of a global pandemic -- it became possible to rush headlong into vaccinating entire populations to achieve herd immunity and beat the novel coronavirus at its game. But then, it cleverly mutated in ways that would beat us at our game. 

The mutated strains have been numerous, but none presented with more serious challenges to the world medical community until the arrival of three new variants; from the U.K., South Africa and Brazil, each inheriting a variant through mutation of the original posing new threats. They have been altered to produce spike proteins covering the virus that are more adhesive, enabling them to better grab onto and enter human cells. Additionally, smaller virus amounts are now capable of causing infection and the amount shed when infectious is higher.

According to infectious disease specialist Dr.Zane Chagla, the South Africa and Brazil variants carry a mutation allowing the virus to escape antibodies that would normally disable them. Shedding greater amounts of virus with the variants is another threat "which just makes it much easier to infect person-to-person", he explained during an Ontario Medical Association media briefing.

Most of Italy, Germany and France with a third wave sweeping through, has driven another lockdown. Europe, experiencing a delay in the delivery of vaccines, just as Canada is, finds a disadvantage against the viral predator in that very fact. The variants, according to studies out of the U.K. are now the cause of more severe disease. And for all those reasons and more Ontario has acknowledged that a third wave of COVID-19 is now sweeping the province leaving scientific advisers concerned that more people could begin to crowd intensive care than during the previous two waves.

 

People line up outside of a Shoppers Drug Mart location on Toronto's Danforth Avenue for their COVID-19 vaccine, Thursday March 11, 2021. Photo by Peter J Thompson / National Post

Some in the expert medical community may be loathe to announce a third wave just yet, but it is clear that the new "variants of concern" are responsible for over half -- 53 percent -- of new infections in Ontario. Of the mutated viruses behind the surge, the B.l.l.7 variant first detected in southeast England last year is recognized as hyper-contagious which allows it to spread faster and more efficiently than previously circulating variants. And then there is the recognition that they may be 30 to 60 percent deadlier.

The densely population-packed Golden Horseshoe region around Lake Ontario, has appeared to succumb to the ravages of the B.l.l.7 variant, and as Dr.Juni asserts, it will not be long before other areas in Ontario will follow suit. The situation has led to the province's science advisory table meeting for a discussion on whether hospitalization numbers and ICU admissions per one thousand diagnoses might increase over earlier waves. "That's the question we're trying to answer", stated Dr.Juni. 

According to Dr.James Downar, a critical care specialist at University of Ottawa, people appear to bear more complicated courses of infection where they improve and then lapse, becoming more ill again. As well, those in younger age demographics appear to be contracting the variant strain. "It is a bit hard to know if that is related to variants, because until recently we were not sequencing every sample", he explained. Exponential growth of SARS-CoV-2 is now being experienced in two-thirds of Ontario's 34 public health units.

People wear face masks as they cross a street in Montreal, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues in Canada and around the world. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes