Thursday, at a press conference, François Legault could not help but mention “the light at the end of the tunnel”. And to go there with this truism: “After winter comes spring. “However, just a week ago, the tension was extreme, with the cases which continued to multiply, the hospitalizations which followed the same tangent and especially the number of patients in intensive care which quickly approached the saturation point, this ultimate “level five” where we must “sort”, that is to say cruelly choose which patients will have the privilege of receiving the care that will allow them to survive.
It must be said that this saturation point arrives quickly in Quebec, much too quickly. “The capacity of the hospital system is the number one public health problem,” said the new national director of public health, Dr.r Luc Boileau. In other words, this poor capacity conditions the actions recommended by public health authorities and leads to the severity of the constraints imposed on the population.
Note that this is not the first time that François Legault has seen this famous light at the end of the tunnel, but, all of a sudden, fate is responsible for activating the switch. Unless it was on these wishes that the illusions feed, what the English designate under the term of wishful thinking.
Omicron is different from other COVID-19 variants, it is argued. It is much more contagious, but less virulent. This is what virologists observe: generally the more a variant of a virus is contagious, the less virulent it is. It’s a new paradigm that makes it possible to respond differently to this fifth wave.
The data on the number of cases should be taken with a grain of salt, because it is estimated that a multitude of people who are asymptomatic or whose symptoms are mild have not declared themselves, especially since PCR tests are reserved for certain categories of people, in particular the personnel of the health network. Nevertheless, the evolution of the last few days is encouraging. Thus, on January 6, there were nearly 18,000 cases; on January 14, this number dropped to 3231. By way of comparison, the peak reached during the previous waves was 2872 cases reported on January 7, 2021. This is to say the brilliance of Omicron.
The peak will therefore have passed in terms of the number of new infections, but not in terms of hospitalizations, including intensive care; there is a lag of a few days, or even a week, between the onset of symptoms and the complications that lead patients to hospital. The number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 has exceeded 3,000, far more than the record, reached on May 13, 2020, of 1,866 hospitalized COVID patients. With 275 patients in intensive care, according to the most recent data, the health system has exceeded the peak of May 2020.
The worst is therefore to come in hospitals. Minister Christian Dubé welcomed the accommodations to which the unions have agreed so that hospital staff work twice as hard, even triple, over the next few weeks. Reaching the fateful level 5 can probably be avoided. But we can not hide that below this ultimate level, it is diagnostic examinations and surgical operations that are postponed, it is procedures deemed necessary on the medical level that are not carried out, it is a medicine that flouts its standards of practice. All we can hope for is that this critical situation will only last a few weeks. It will then be a question of making up for lost time.
The contagiousness of Omicron is such that we no longer know precisely how many Quebecers have been infected; we must content ourselves with approximations. This characteristic of the variant has the advantage that it rapidly improves herd immunity. Some argue that the government should put an end to health constraints and give the population back their full freedom. Unfortunately, this is going too fast in business. There is still some 10% of the adult population that is not adequately vaccinated. Vaccinated people in poor health can also end up in hospital if they have COVID-19. Our hospital system, which is struggling at the moment while the sanitary measures are in place, could crumble if we withdraw them too quickly.
More importantly, once the Omicron is exhausted, other variants could emerge, of which neither the strength of propagation nor the virulence can be predicted. So there is every reason to wait before showing off.