Q&A: Dr. Janice Fitzgerald on new variants, vaccines and life with COVID-19

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, Newfoundland and Labrador's Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Janice Fitzgerald has been at the forefront of the province's response. 

As the public returns to everyday life with COVID-19 more than two years later, vaccines are widely available, and many measures have been relaxed or lifted altogether. However, Fitzgerald says while the public may have largely settled into life with COVID-19, we must remain vigilant.

Fitzgerald recently spoke to the CBC's Leigh Anne Power about the province's current COVID-19 circumstances.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: When the pandemic began, even one death was alarming. Now we're seeing three or four deaths a week, and it's very quiet. Why do you think that is?

A: The nature, unfortunately, of what's happened with COVID is that, you know, it has become quite a highly transmissible virus, and [it's] very difficult to put measures in place to control that, whereas previously, we were able to do that.

Unfortunately, when we see that kind of spread, much as we would with influenza for example, then the more people we will see with severe disease, and unfortunately, sometimes people will succumb to that.

We no longer test the way we did last year, either. So how do we know how much COVID is actually in our communities?

We are still doing some testing. Certainly, you know, in hospitals, in emergencies, if people are presenting and they're unwell, we are still doing some testing in that regard. People are doing their own testing, you know, with the rapid tests, and some people are reporting that. As well, we have waste water [testing], so that gives us some insight into what's happening. 

There are a few other things we look at, like the number of people who are actually in hospital with COVID, not necessarily because of COVID, the number of staff who might be isolating because of COVID, those all give us information. They are, generally speaking, a reflection of what's happening in the community. Over time, we can correlate that with what we think is actually happening in the communities.

So what's happening in the communities?

We certainly are seeing a little bit of an uptick in the last little while. Not unexpected, you know, as people start to move indoors, schools are back in session. So we are seeing a slight uptick in the number of cases that we have.

Certainly anecdotally, I'm sure people are aware of cases circulating around them, but that's, you know, not unexpected, and not out of keeping with what's being seen elsewhere. 

Some people are saying that if they test positive on a rapid test, they are still going to work or school, or they're travelling even positive, because they say the guidelines are sort of vague now. What do you say to those people?