N.B. COVID-19 roundup: Epidemiologist cautions against loosening restrictions too quickly

While some jurisdictions across Canada are considering loosening pandemic restrictions, one infection control epidemiologist is urging caution.

While some indicators look promising for a gradual removal of restrictions, there are still a number of unknowns, said Colin Furness of the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto University of Toronto.

Furness, who has been watching New Brunswick's experience with the pandemic since it started, points to possible new variants, including a potentially more infectious subvariant of Omicron, BA.2, now confirmed in New Brunswick.

But Furness says his biggest concern is brain tissue loss attributed to COVID, which hasn't been properly studied.

"We could think about it, I think, roughly in terms of serious head injury," he said. "You know, people do have head injuries sometimes and there's loss of brain tissue that comes from a serious head injury. And that, you know, in the short-term, that results in the brain fog, that long-COVID brain fog-type scenario, where …  it's difficult to concentrate.

"But what we don't know are what are the longer-term effects in terms of development of something like Parkinson's disease or early onset dementia."

Furness said COVID will remain a major concern for some people for the foreseeable future.

This includes children under the age of five, who aren't yet eligible to be vaccinated, the elderly and the immunocompromised.

New Brunswick recorded seven COVID-related deaths over the weekend — six on Saturday and one on Sunday.

That marks 31 deaths since the province returned to the less restrictive Level 2 of the COVID-19 winter plan Jan. 28 at 11:59 p.m., two days ahead of schedule.

There are 159 people in hospital — 75 for COVID-19, while the other 89 were originally admitted for something else when they tested positive for the virus.

Seventeen people are in intensive care, nine of them on ventilators.

Public Health recorded 154 new cases of COVID, based on PCR (polymerase chain reaction) lab tests, putting the province's active case count at 3,554.

An additional 394 people reported testing positive on rapid tests.