The scenes of jubilant crowds reconnecting with the pleasure of the festivals reflect in a beautiful way the need that citizens have to believe that the pandemic is no more than an ugly memory. In these groupings where we warm up to happiness, roped on each other, masks are rare. However, if official statistics are to be believed, these dancing assemblies would be downright Omicron baths.
One cannot find a better contrast with the epidemiological portrait which confirms that Quebec has entered a 7e wave of COVID-19, with indicators rising sharply. The last summers had allowed a return to a more “normal” life, as the virus had offered a summer respite. This is not the case this year. With construction holidays just weeks away, the red lights are all on: hospitalizations are rising, as are the number of intensive care patients; we no longer make much of it, but deaths have also resumed the upward curve. Above all, healthcare workers are absent by the thousands due to COVID (7310 in the latest report) and this is in addition to two aggravating factors of the summer: the shortage of personnel and the sacrosanct holidays, of which these workers badly need after more than two years of hard work. This summer, six hospitals have already planned to partially close their emergency rooms, because these combined factors do not allow the maintenance of service. How many more will be added, when we know that the occupancy rate of emergencies in Quebec has been over 100% in recent days?
Popular rumor suggests that the cases abound — around us, we only hear about that. Holiday camps have canceled stays for lack of health personnel; employers have resumed recommending the wearing of masks in the workplace; of the cultural circles wonder about the relevance of imposing again — and reluctantly — sanitary measures. This 7e wave plays funny, because this damned virus still manages to surprise us at the bend. This time, it was the very high contagiousness index of the BA.4 and BA.5 variants, equal to that of measles, which surprised the scientists and contributed to an upsurge in cases.
But despite this seemingly bleak portrait, “the situation is under control for the moment”. This was the preamble of the Minister of Health, Christian Dubé, and the national director of public health, Luc Boileau, who presented themselves in tandem to the press on Thursday, a first for a few months. We would have expected a little clap of thunder, a return of the mask? But they conveyed a kind invitation to vigilance. Among other recommendations, they urged the sick to respect the periods of isolation, suggesting that the galloping contamination of the last few weeks was caused in part by people walking their contagion to the four corners of the province.
We cannot blame the population for having itself started to take a break. In high political places, we feel a total disinterest in the face of pandemic issues. What ? The pandemic? Still ? It is however still very active, like the Dr Boileau confirmed it on Thursday. Attentive to the level of exasperation of citizens, who no longer want – rightly – a life punctuated by the virus, have the authorities exceeded a reasonable level of erasure?
Yes, alas. To the point where after two years of warnings well felt by an authentic and natural Prime Minister, we can no longer find in the monotonous presentations of the national director of public health the points of increased vigilance, where they should be. By dint of fearing to exasperate the population with bad news, have we ended up encouraging the exacerbated relaxation? And on which indicators do we connect our alarms? Contamination seems to be picking up again, but there are no official data to calculate the actual number of cases, as PCR tests for the general population are not available, self-reporting statistics for cases do not provide only a partial portrait and the measurement of wastewater by city is incomplete. We navigate by sight. The wave hits silently, and the population remains in the dark. There are no more health measures, no more prevention messages, no more political outings. Live with the pandemic, manage your personal risk, come what may.
Let’s hope that the health network will hold up in the face of the increase in hospitalizations and the high rate of staff absenteeism, all against a background of vaccination which is withering among a large percentage of the population. The current wave is different from the previous ones, because there are no mandatory health measures in the public space. Collective protection relies on the goodwill of people. It is a compass that lacks a certain precision.