Via CBC News: Why a second wave of COVID-19 is more dangerous than it looks. Excerpt:
At first glance, Canada's second wave of COVID-19 is looking a lot different than the first wave.
Testing capacity has drastically improved, barriers to getting tested have been lowered, stocks of personal protective equipment have grown, and while we still don't have a safe and effective vaccine — we know a lot more about COVID-19 and how to treat it.
And despite a rapid rise in new cases across the country, hospitalizations and deaths are comparatively lower so far, which might lead you to believe the second wave will be less dangerous than the first.
"It may seem somewhat comforting to say, 'Yes, there are a lot of cases, but we're not seeing our hospitals overwhelmed, and we're not seeing a huge number of deaths so far. So things are better, right?'" said Dr. Samir Sinha, director of geriatrics at Sinai Health and University Health Network in Toronto.
"The truth of the matter is, we're just getting started."
Sinha said COVID-19 outbreaks typically followed a predictable pattern: people increase their number of contacts amid relaxed restrictions, then weeks later cases rise, hospitalizations spike and more deaths occur.
"We need to modify our behaviour and do everything we can to try and wrestle it down as soon as possible," he said.
"If we don't, we're going to be thinking back a month from now saying, 'What were we doing, and why did we even allow it to get this bad?'"
Some provinces could face worse second wave
In Canada's hardest-hit provinces, cracks are already beginning to show.
"The second wave isn't just starting. It's already underway," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said last week. "The numbers are clear."
Ontario public health officials are projecting up to 1,000 new cases per day this month, and the number of patients in the province's hospitals with confirmed cases of COVID-19 doubled in just one week.
Testing backlogs in Ontario also reached a record high of more than 90,000 this week, and the province's associate chief medical officer of health, Dr. Barbara Yaffe, said the number of contacts per COVID-19 case is "much higher" than in the first wave.
"We did lose focus over the summer, and we didn't quite do enough to prevent a second wave," said Dr. Irfan Dhalla, vice-president of physician quality at Unity Health, which includes St. Michael's and St. Joseph's hospitals in Toronto.
"Everybody who works in health care is extremely worried, and now we need to think about what do we do to stop the second wave, and what do we do to prevent the third wave?"
