A cautious reopening plan is the best way to move forward and beyond the pandemic, says Simcoe-Muskoka's medical officer of health.
The numbers may be decreasing steadily, but Dr. Charles Gardner believes it's important to “stay the course” as the province begins to look ahead to potentially easing restrictions and getting citizens back to a normal life.
“I believe in going slowly, carefully. I still feel we have a significant elevation of cases right now. Even though we’ve dropped quite substantially, there’s still higher (cases) than I would advise for opening things up," Gardner said during Tuesday’s weekly media briefing.
“We wouldn’t want a setback which could endanger the next steps to come and endanger the kind of summer we (could) have if we are careful," he added.
Gardner noted intensive care units (ICUs) still have a very high occupancy and remain vulnerable should number increase.
“There’s not much (of a) buffer there for a resurgence in cases," he said, adding it would be "far wiser to stick with the schedule that we presently have.”
Despite the provincial stay-at-home order being set to expire on Wednesday, Gardner is reminding residents that the public health guidelines — such as masking and following physical-distancing guidelines — are still in place.
Gardner says his biggest request to residents is simply to stay the course and "abide by this timeline the province has crafted."
“I think it’s very important people take to heart what they need to do and what is required of them now and with each step and that people don’t test the limits of things,” he said.
Gardner said he would also like to see the number of immunizations continue to increase.
“I see that we are getting a really good, robust response to our vaccination campaign," he said, "but we will need a very high coverage rate at the end of it all to safely keep the pandemic under control in order to avoid a fourth wave later in the year.
"We need to achieve that and have everybody get behind that,” Gardner added. “We will need caution moving into the fall and we will need that really high immunization rate (to be) somewhere near 80 and 90 per cent.”
Continued use of masks in indoor public spaces and physical distancing from people not in your household are other ways he anticipates the province can avoid a fourth wave.
“We’re going to have to be careful going into the fall to keep it under control and to see what happens," Gardner said. "To some degree, COVID-19 is a seasonal virus, like other coronaviruses and therefore much more likely to build as the weather turns colder. We just have to wait and see to what degree that does or does not happen.”
When asked what grade he would give the province in its response to the pandemic, Gardner stated there have been both successes and failures in the collective response to the pandemic.
“To me, the most worrisome step was the choice was made in February to come out of shutdown. At that point, I was quite public in my expression of concern and we did end up with a third wave," he said. "I think that was definitely an important misstep, but there have been learnings from that.
“We’ve learned through trial and error that the framework the province had used in the fall of last year, and then into the third wave that was based on restrictions at a health unit level, was not working," Gardner added. "I would say, despite the very best of intentions and a great deal of work that was put into that framework, employing what we knew collectively, it just turned out it wasn’t effective in preventing transmission between locales with the migration of people from more restrictive to less restrictive.”
