What the end of the COVID emergency means for Canada
CBC
The World Health Organization has ended the global COVID-19 emergency, citing increased immunity, fewer deaths and less pressure on hospitals. But while the situation with the virus has improved worldwide, it has also exposed major issues with Canada's health-care system.
Canadian experts said Friday that regardless of WHO's decision, COVID will remain a challenge to public health for years to come and has left lasting scars on the health-care system.
Dr. Bonnie Henry, British Columbia's provincial health officer and chair of the Council of Chief Medical Officers of Health, told CBC News that while the emergency phase of the pandemic is ending, COVID shed light on problems in long-term care and hospitals that need to be addressed.
"We have to pay attention to ensuring that we have that surge capacity in our health-care system," she said, adding that COVID also exposed "basic societal inequities" around pay and staffing in the system.
"This is another virus that is in our communities, it's going to be with us for a period of time and it adds to that baseline number of people that are going to require hospital care periodically in our community," Henry said. "So we need to add that on top of, and not go back to, the very stretched system we had before."
The pandemic, which was first declared an international crisis by WHO, the United Nations' health agency, on Jan. 30, 2020, resulted in unprecedented lockdowns, economic upheaval and the deaths of at least seven million people worldwide and more than 52,000 people in Canada.
But the death toll is likely much higher than reported, and WHO estimates it could be more than 20 million globally.
"It's with great hope that I declare COVID-19 over as a global health emergency," WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Friday. "That does not mean COVID-19 is over as a global health threat."
Following WHO's declaration, the Public Health Agency of Canada said in a statement that it will "continue its work with provinces and territories to implement a long-term, sustainable approach to the ongoing management of COVID-19."
COVID hospitalizations still remain stubbornly high in Canada, with 2,881 hospital beds occupied by COVID patients across the country, according to the latest federal data, despite continuing to decline since the beginning of the year. But the numbers are a far cry from where they once were.
"We had some very, very challenging times with COVID," said Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious diseases physician at Toronto General Hospital, recalling instances where adults had to be treated in pediatric wards and authorities built tents outside ERs to treat the overflow of patients in the spring of 2021.
He said that WHO's declaration should be treated as an opportunity to reflect on the country's flawed health-care system and how it can be improved going forward.
In many parts of the country, emergency rooms remain under immense strain despite the decline in COVID hospitalizations.
"It's a patchwork of many different systems that don't necessarily fit well together," Bogoch said.