The National Institute of Public Health of Quebec (INSPQ) finally announced on Wednesday that a sixth wave is indeed hitting Quebec, but the change in the government’s discourse has been encouraging Quebecers for weeks to let their guard down, denounce experts. A position that is difficult to defend when COVID-19 has claimed more than 1,200 victims since the green light given to the relaxations by François Legault.
At the end of January, the Prime Minister declared that Quebec was finally “out of the tunnel” and could release the health vice. But without fanfare, more than 1,200 Quebecers have since been swept away by COVID, bringing the victims since the fifth wave to a total of more than 2,700. After a few days of hesitation, the INSPQ finally notified the Ministry of Health that a sixth wave was well under way in Quebec, generated by the very contagious subvariant BA.2, 30% to 40% more transmissible than its predecessor the BA.1.
For several observers, who have been reporting a worrying rise in cases for the past few days, the government’s comforting tone and the discourse trivializing COVID have distorted public perception and contributed to the current increase in cases.
“There are almost no more press briefings, no more PRC tests, no more awareness. The message that the population is receiving is that the Ministry of Health is no longer talking about the pandemic, ”insisted Roxane Borgès Da Silva, researcher and professor at the School of Health at the University of Montreal, on Wednesday, before the INSPQ announcement.
In recent weeks, the government discourse, “advocating personal responsibility for risk management”, has changed radically, also observe other experts. Elected officials are rare at press briefings dedicated to the pandemic. Despite a 60% increase in one week in absences among health care workers, the acting director of public health in Quebec, Dr.r Luc Boileau, refused until last Sunday to speak of a sixth wave.
But the CIRANO research group, which publishes an estimate of the number of cases of COVID infection in Quebec every week thanks to a sample of 3,000 people, observed last week an increase of 13,000 to 19,000 daily cases. “It’s an increase of almost 50% in 7 days, it’s very worrying”, points out Mme DaSilva.
According to Kim Lavoie, director of the Canada Chair in Behavioral Medicine and professor at UQAM, the government has abandoned its role of prevention, by trivializing the discourse on COVID.
“We have been on a plateau of 1000 hospitalizations for weeks! The decision to lift the health measures is one of convenience, not a public health decision. People are given the impression that the pandemic is over. But each wave has shown us that the more the virus circulates, the more the virus mutates, and this is what is happening, again. How can we be surprised? “, she laments.
personal management
Asked about the concrete impact that the declaration of this sixth wave could have on health measures, Dr.r Gaston de Serres, medical adviser at the INSPQ, told the Homework that the current government no longer wanted an “imposed” management of the pandemic, and that it rather wanted to put risk management “in the hands of the citizens”.
“The D.r Boileau repeated that it was up to people to limit their contacts. It is a choice that has been made here and elsewhere in the world. The government has yet to decide what will happen to mask-wearing. But it is clearly not just the mask, but rather the reduction of contact by the population that can change the current course of things, ”he says.
For Kim Lavoie, the abandonment of public health measures leads the public to believe that the situation is under control. “People are told to ‘self-manage’, but all monitoring tools have been removed to inform them of the risk”, denounces the researcher.
According to Roxane Borgès Da Silva, we have gone from joint risk management to “every man for himself”. “Empowering people is a public health principle advocated for adopting healthy lifestyles or managing certain diseases, but it is different for controlling a highly viral disease, in particular to protect the most vulnerable. A balance must be found between complete self-management and the maintenance of certain collective measures. »
For the Dr Donald Vinh, infectious disease specialist at the McGill University Health Center, the arrival of this sixth wave militates in particular in favor of the acceleration of certain public measures, in particular the granting of a fourth dose to the most vulnerable and even a policy of more inclusive immunization. In the United States, as in Europe, the incidence of BA.2 triples every two weeks. The same will be true here, where just over 50% of the population received three doses. “We must speed up the protection of the most vulnerable people. We are not in shortage of vaccines, it is no longer an issue. Concerned healthcare workers struggling to get their fourth dose, imagine the average person,” he says. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have already given the green light for the granting of a fourth dose for those over 50.
According to Kim Lavoie, the international iCARE study, which surveys the opinion of tens of thousands of citizens around the world, including thousands of Canadians, shows that 82% to 96% of people say they continue to wear the mask. “It is wrong to say that people no longer adhere to the measures, they are even in favor of maintaining the vaccine passport. You have to keep the mask, but by explaining to people why decisions are made. Between all or nothing, there is a balance. »
Despite the lack of data on the actual number of cases of infection, the INSPQ said it based its opinion on declaring a sixth wave initiated on several conclusive indicators. In particular, on the 60% increase in the number of healthcare workers infected in one week, on a positivity rate reaching 17% among screened workers, on the recent increase in hospital admissions and the incidence of cases reported in all regions and all age strata.