It has been a long time since Quebecers have been invited to a press briefing during the weekend by Public Health, thanks to the specter of a sixth wave of COVID-19, which is stirring these days. Playing it safe, but determined not to impose additional measures, the interim national director of public health, Luc Boileau, offered a pact of sorts to Quebecers, asking them to “act responsibly” for themselves and for others, and urging the most vulnerable to be extra vigilant. It thus confirms a far from trivial paradigm shift.
Even if it is complicated by the progression of the BA.2 variant, already at the origin of two thirds of the cases, the current increase in the cases of COVID-19 is not a surprise; it was a risk that had been calculated and even anticipated, he stressed. This does not prevent its effects from being felt on our clay-footed health system. The number of healthcare workers caught up in the virus has risen by 60% in the past few days (the counter showed 8,600 absent on Sunday). And hospitalizations are going up in several regions. The tune is familiar and somewhat demoralizing.
Not to mention that BA.2, this little cousin of Omicron, a highly contagious variant which has invaded our parties holidays, has an even 30 to 40% higher contagiousness. Fortunately, BA.2 does not differ so much from its parent. We therefore know his profile and his immunity well. Thus, specified Sunday the Dr Boileau, if people scrupulously observe barrier gestures (the triad of hand washing, wearing a mask, distancing), if vaccination continues, and not just for the fourth dose in the most vulnerable (the third dose, a-t- he recalled, is important), it is reasonable to believe that our health network will resist the passage of the BA.2 variant.
We do want to believe it. Still, the past has taught us that what has happened elsewhere, particularly in Europe, is very likely to happen again here. What have we seen there recently? Several lifts, some of them great, like in Scotland or Germany, thanks again to BA.2. However, these countries, engaged like us on the path of relaxation, have chosen not to go back, or have chosen timidly. The latter calculate that the progress made in terms of collective immunity and scientific knowledge – combined with the persistence of barrier gestures – will be enough to get through this turbulence. The indicators seem to prove them right.
We are no less equipped than the Europeans in terms of knowledge. We are somewhat less so in terms of the solidity of our hospital structures. But since some outbreaks already seem to be decelerating in Europe, Quebec experts believe that there is reason to hope that BA.2 will weigh less heavily on our battered system. The most likely scenario is “that the rise in cases could reach […] half of what we experienced last January, assessed the Dr Boileau. As long as Quebecers do their bit, he said. Which is far from won knowing that, for many, the pandemic is already behind.
This is undoubtedly where the challenge of the next few weeks will lie: in this impression of having collectively reached the finish line, exhausted and washed out, driven by a fierce desire to move on to the next world, while there is still work to be done. The impression is all the more tenacious as we have gone from a restrictive collective risk management logic to a more flexible management based on individual gestures, which everyone observes with more or less assiduity and rigor.
Pressed with questions concerning a possible preparation of Quebecers for tightening, the Dr Boileau wanted to be firm: the time has come “to learn to live with the virus continuously”. Which also supposes, implicitly, to resolve to live with a thread in the leg, that of sanitary measures that we know very well, and that, for several more weeks. Will pass or not pass?
It is too late to convince the credulous and the recalcitrant. You might as well bet everything on the majority engaged in good faith in this battle. In this spirit, it seems essential that Public Health redouble its transparency by starting now to speak more openly about the future. Find out what exactly it means to live with the virus, once the BA.2 threat has passed.
We can bet that the population will follow more willingly if they have the feeling that the gestures requested are indeed based on science. For that, decision makers will have to give up for good trying to find a balance between what science says and the effect that, according to them, this same science will have on the epidermis of Quebeckers of goodwill. Decision makers owe them that.