'We've certainly learned a lot': Dr. Janice Fitzgerald looks back — and forward — after two years of COVID-19

It's been a long two years for Newfoundland and Labrador Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Janice Fitzgerald, thrusted into the public eye during a pandemic and ending up on everything from stickers and posters to memes and rugs.

As Newfoundland and Labrador lifted pandemic restrictions this week, Fitzgerald is looking back at her own experiences through the COVID-19 pandemic, what the province can take away from the last two years, and what comes next.

Fitzgerald spoke with the CBC's Martin Jones on CBC Newfoundland Morning earlier this week.

The discussion has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Let's look back to that very first case of COVID-19 in this province. Did you anticipate that you'd spend the next two years giving media briefings about them?

A: I don't know if any of us really anticipated quite the intensity that it was going to be for two years. But we certainly knew that if we were heading to a pandemic, well at that point we were, that it was going to be quite some time before things would settle down. I think very early on the predictions were around two years. So we knew that we were probably going to end up at this point, but I don't know that we anticipated just how involved it was going to be.

Most restrictions are now gone, and there's mixed feelings. What can you say to those people who might be on the fence right now? Who may not be able to fully embrace these new freedoms that most of us have?

I say that I completely understand how people feel in that regard. It has been two years that we've been saying we've been trying to avoid getting COVID. And I guess we should still avoid trying to get it, but what we're dealing with now is a little bit different, a fair bit different actually than what we dealt with in the beginning and what we've dealt with even last year around this time with the Alpha wave that we had and all the Delta cases through the summer and the fall. So it does allow us to make these moves ... This is going to continue to evolve for some time yet, and we do need to learn ways that we can safely live with COVID in our midst. And most of those tools we already know, and we know well.

You talked there about learning to live with COVID-19, certainly with the Omicron variant. It's still very much an issue here in this province. What circumstances would need to exist to return to restrictions like we've seen over the past couple of years? 

It's difficult to predict, but certainly I think we would be reluctant to, you know, to have to go back to that. We know that there have been quite a few consequences as a result of these restrictions. So we have to be very thoughtful and very careful about how we apply them.…I think we would certainly have to see a more virulent variant, as well as one where the vaccine is not as protective against severe disease as we're seeing with the Omicron variant. And as we have seen with other variants as well, even with Delta, this vaccine was quite protective both against transmission and severe disease. So, you know, we have all of those things that are working in our favour right now, so we have to remember that. 

Should we be wary of another pandemic or another wave? Is it a matter of when, rather than if it happens?

So at the risk of sounding like, you know, Debbie Downer...pandemics have happened throughout history and pandemics will continue to happen throughout history. In 2009, we had an H1N1 pandemic and now this. We will see pandemics again, and I think the most important thing that we have to do now is take the lessons that we've learned throughout COVID and make sure that we we really improve our defences...We don't know what the future will bring. So the best we can do is to learn from what we've been through and to make sure that we have all the things in place to be able to respond.

As a province, what have we learned over the past couple of years?

We've certainly learned a lot of information if we're thinking very practically. I mean masking, certainly we've seen the benefits of masking in respiratory diseases and in the prevention of respiratory diseases. I think that's really important and something we need to take forward. I think some of the infection prevention and control measures that we've learned in our long term care facilities and personal care homes, I think that's information that we have to take and we have to improve. We have to take that information that we've learned and we have to find a way to balance that protection from infectious disease with maintaining a wellness for people who live in these facilities.