With COVID here to stay, what can we expect?

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As Ontario begins to ease public health restrictions implemented in response to an unprecedented spike in cases of COVID-19 driven by the Omicron variant, public health officials have begun to speculate what a future with COVID-19 will look like.

In a news conference last week, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, Dr. Kieran Moore, said COVID-19 is something people are going to have to learn to live with. But little detail has yet to be provided as to what “living with” ”COVID-19 will actually entail.

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In the Kingston, Frontenac and Lennox and Addington Public Health catchment area, indicators of COVID-19 activity such as test positivity rates and wastewater measurements suggest the latest wave of the virus is quieting down.

While things may be settling, local medical officer of health Dr. Piotr Oglaza was clear that COVID-19 is here to stay.

There’s no indication that this pathogen is going away. There’s no indication that it’s going to be eradicated. There’s no indication that we won’t see recurrences of COVID, and we need to be prepared for the fact that this will be part of the collecting pathogens, ”Oglaza said in a media call on Friday.

According to the US Center for Disease Control, when there is constant presence of a disease or pathogen in a population, the disease has become endemic. As COVID-19 has ebbed and flowed over the past two years, there has been much discussion of the eventuality that the virus will be an endemic one.

While Oglaza would like to see the COVID-19 virus become endemic, he recognizes that this is a natural process that cannot be rushed.

“We cannot do much to speed up, or prevent, or do anything about that natural transition to endemicity and that recurrent pattern of emergence. But we can protect vulnerable individuals along the way,” he said. point in time where we can say’now it’s endemic.’ I think this is more of a gradual process when we start seeing the typical seasonal pattern of spread, ”he said.

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While lifting public health restrictions and accepting that COVID-19 is soon to be a regular, seasonal virus is important, the benefits of opening up need to be weighed against the consequences, which in the case of COVID-19 means human lives.

To date in Canada, more than 33,600 people have died from COVID-19. In the KFL & A region, there have been 29 deaths, with more than half of those occurring in the past three months.

“We’ll get to that point (of endemicity) eventually, because that’s the natural evolution of any new pathogens and viruses. We’ve achieved endemicity with many viruses that we have circulating in our pool of pathogens,” he said. It’s how we get through that period (between pandemic and endemic) with minimal losses, minimal morbidity . ””

Moving forward, Oglaza explained that the key to providing protection against the virus with minimal public health measures will be ensuring that people have some level of immunity against the virus.

“We may not be able to stop the spread, and this spread might still be happening. But what we want to prevent is people getting severely sick, getting hospitalized or dying from COVID, and that’s something that we can accomplish with vaccine,” he said. “We’re looking at measures that will provide protection to individuals who could be at risk of dying if they first encountered the live virus with no (pre-existing) protection from the vaccine.”

While Oglaza does not know whether public health measures such as lockdowns or capacity limits will be required in the future, he is hopeful that basic precautions and vaccinations will be sufficient to address the risks of COVID-19.

“I do sincerely hope that with the basic measures such as staying home when sick, covering your cough and getting immunized, we’ll be able to resume our normal societal functions and practise those precautions more during that period of increased transmissibility but there won’ t be a need for any more drastic measures, ”he said.