COVID-19 surges shows continued need for protective measures: doctors
Global News
Alberta, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and the Northwest Territories are all dealing with COVID-19 surges, while Ontario and Quebec are experiencing plateaus.
Canadians need to be “realistic” about the need for public health measures as the country heads into the fall and winter, doctors say as COVID-19 cases surge in some provinces.
Throughout the country, provinces and territories have been seeing COVID-19’s fourth wave play out differently.
In Alberta and Saskatchewan, health-care systems have been strained to the point where the Canadian Armed Forces have been sent in to help. New Brunswick and the Northwest Territories are also clamping down to calm a recent jump in infections.
Experts say those spikes show a continued need for protective measures as the colder weather settles in across Canada.
“People need to be realistic about the fact that we keep trying to pull things back in terms of public health measures that are easy … like masks,” said Dr. Lisa Barrett, an infectious diseases expert with Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia.
“If we can avoid a little bit of that and set people’s expectations that this is going to be into the winter and spring before we can get rid of that … I think people will understand that it’s OK.”
For weeks, the COVID-19 pandemic in Alberta and Saskatchewan has captured the nation’s attention as hospitals filled up with mostly unvaccinated patients.
But while many Canadians were fixated on those two provinces, infections in New Brunswick and the Northwest Territories began creeping up.