What you need to know about COVID-19 as we head into fall

As we head into another respiratory illness season, here’s a look at where Ontario stands when it comes to COVID-19 and what you need to know.

It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly five years since COVID-19 emerged. In that time, it has gone from a world-wide pandemic that shut down countries to another infectious disease that is part of day-to-day reality. 

Still, the disease poses a risk to many people, especially those who are elderly or immunocompromised. As we head into another respiratory illness season, here’s a look at where Ontario stands when it comes to the virus and what you need to know.

Getting a clear picture of how much COVID-19 is circulating is trickier now than it was a few months ago. That’s because the province made a decision to end the wastewater surveillance program, which had been providing data about COVID-19 spread in communities across the province. While some monitoring is still being done by the federal government, it is mainly in the large population centres like Toronto.

“Now we're left with a situation where we only get information for about 20 per cent of the population, and essentially only in the Greater Toronto Area,” Dr. Fahad Razak, an internist at St. Michael’s Hospital and the former scientific director of the Ontario COVID-19 Science Table, told CP24.com. “So if you're in other parts of the province, you just don't know.”

That said, there has been a high degree of spread this summer that has been “challenging,” Razak says.

“What we do see right now suggests that we are at a high degree of spread. So if you look at the Public Health Agency of Canada website, Ontario is now flagged as a high degree of spread in the remaining monitor that exists.”

The impact of the virus today is a far cry from the height of the pandemic. However, it still puts some people in hospital and can still be deadly for certain individuals.