Without strong support from the population to the instructions announced Thursday by Quebec, they may not be enough to stem the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant, experts say.
• Read also: COVID-19: Omicron, a highly contagious version of the virus
• Read also: COVID-19: 3,768 new cases and 7 deaths in Quebec
The measures announced Thursday evening by Quebec, including the reduction to 50% of the capacity of non-essential shops, represent “the minimum” required to stop the increase in cases, said Friday the doctor-epidemiologist at the National Institute of Health public of Quebec, Gaston De Serres.
Even in a scenario where Quebecers completely adhere to the instructions and reduce their contacts to a minimum, cases of contamination will continue to increase during the coming days, he added.
“Without a drastic reduction in the number of contacts, it will be very difficult to reduce the number of cases,” said Gaston De Serres.
Authorities announced on Friday that they had detected 3,768 new cases of COVID-19 infection in the past 24 hours, an all-time high since the start of the pandemic in Quebec.
Containment?
However, these people could have contaminated many others, underlined the associate professor at the School of Public Health of the University of Montreal, Roxane Borgès Da Silva who cannot explain the two-day delay granted by Quebec to the shops to reduce their capacity.
“It would have had an economic impact, but I wonder if these thousands of people who go for a walk without knowing that they are carriers of COVID will not infect many people during the weekend,” she said. Explain.
Admittedly, Roxane Borgès Da Silva admits that the school break during the holidays will make it possible to limit contamination in primary and secondary schools, where the virus spreads quickly, but the arrival of the Omicron variant changes the situation.
Thus, according to her, rather than decreeing “half-measures”, the Legault government should immediately have announced a confinement during the holiday season with the closure of non-essential businesses.
“It would have a smaller impact for businesses, and also for parents who will have to keep their children at home during this period anyway,” said the expert.