'Beyond negligent': Health experts critical of leadership on sixth COVID wave

COVID-19 infections are soaring and hospitalizations are rising in many parts of Canada, but with most regions sticking with relaxed protective measures while providing less data and fewer updates, some medical experts are critical of how the sixth wave of the pandemic is being managed.

With public messaging and inadequate epidemiological data suggesting we are now ‘living with COVID-19’, doctors and other health experts say it is very difficult for the public to make informed personal decisions.

“Getting a real idea of what's going on across Canada is getting harder and harder … It's getting to a point that if you want to assess your own risk, it's going to be impossible to do,” Julie Lajoie, a research associate in medical microbiology at the University of Manitoba with a PhD in virology and immunology, told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview on April 11.

“Right now, many places across Canada are moving to that idea of living with the virus, making it sound like that virus is now in an endemic phase. Which it’s not. We are still really in a pandemic, it’s worldwide.”

For the situation to become endemic, Lajoie says there should no longer be a large influx of hospital patients. The flu does not cause this level of hospitalization, she said, adding that despite people’s eagerness to compare COVID-19 to a cold, the SARS-CoV-2 virus is very different.