Canada’s chief public health officer said on Tuesday her role was to prepare for “worst-case scenarios” related to variants that evade immunity, as cases appear to be on the rise this fall.
Testifying before the Commons Health Committee on Tuesday, Dr Theresa Tam said the Public Health Agency of Canada is mostly watching developments closely in Omicron variants, which are the most common subvariants in the country, but also any new mutations of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which gives COVID-19.
“We haven’t detected any truly exceptional apparitions so far, but it’s a scenario we’re preparing for,” Dr. Tam said during her virtual testimony.
At the start of the pandemic, in 2020, the virus was mutating in all sorts of ways because people weren’t immune from previous infection or through vaccination.
Now, because the virus has been thwarted in some way, several Omicron subvariants have begun to develop identical mutations — a natural phenomenon in biology called “evolutionary convergence.”
“When there is broad population immunity, the virus is under pressure to find new strengths, such as evading our existing immunity,” Dr Tam explained.
The worst-case scenario, she said, would be that eventually a variant finds a way around the effectiveness of vaccines and monoclonal antibody treatment. “We haven’t detected one yet, but we have to be prepared for it,” she said.
Bivalent vaccines
The COVID-19 situation in Canada has remained relatively stable since the first week of October, although the weather has cooled and students have returned to school. Signs of a potential resurgence are beginning to be seen, however, with the number of hospitalizations rising in some parts of the country, Dr Tam said.
Meanwhile, only 18 per cent of eligible Canadians have received a first set of two vaccine doses and a booster dose in the past six months, the chief medical officer of health said.
“The good news is that we now have bivalent vaccines,” which target both the original strain of COVID-19 and newer offshoots,” she recalled. So far, about 5% of eligible Canadians have received a “bivalent injection”.
Ms Tam said the federal agency is working to build momentum around these new vaccines to try to increase the number of people who will get vaccinated this fall.
Very critical conservatives
But Dr Tam has received a barrage of criticism from conservative committee members over her communication throughout the pandemic. Conservative MPs argued that the public had “lost faith” in institutions like the Public Health Agency.
If another really bad virus came along and required lockdowns and other health measures, “Canadians wouldn’t listen to you,” Tory MP Randy Hoback of Saskatchewan told Ms. Tam.
“They would say, ‘Never. We will never do that again. We don’t trust you, we don’t listen to you”. And then we would see massive deaths. »
Alberta MP Laila Goodridge told Dr Tam that the public health agency’s recommendations were out of touch with the day-to-day reality of citizens in rural Canada. She suggested the scientist to visit these places in person.
Several MPs also asked Dr. Tam if there would be a retrospective analysis of Canada’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. She agreed it would be important to learn lessons from how the country has handled the virus, but did not comment on specific plans.
“We have just gone through the most significant pandemic of the current era and it is very important to take note of the lessons learned and to be as objective as possible, she said. It is important to prepare well for our response in the future, since there will be other pandemics. »