With hospitalizations in Quebec once again on the rise, health officials encourage booster shots

For the first time in months, Quebec Health Minister Christian Dubé appeared at a COVID-19 news conference, signalling health officials are concerned about a rise in hospitalizations. 

The number of hospitalizations linked to COVID-19 in Quebec has risen above 2,000 for the first time since mid-August. While Dubé encouraged more people to get booster shots, he also sought to reassure Quebecers about the pandemic situation in the province. 

He said more than 100,000 people per week have received a booster shot since Aug. 15 and that the number of people in hospital with the virus remains lower than the previous wave of cases over the summer.

Dubé also said the new Pfizer bivalent COVID-19 booster will be available in the coming days in Quebec. The booster is considered safe for the 18-to-29 age group, according to the Health Ministry.

"This isn't an exponential rise like we saw previously. It's not being felt in intensive care. It is different from the seventh wave in the summer," the health minister said, sitting alongside Public Health Director Dr. Luc Boileau.

Dubé said what is most worrisome is the rise in cases elsewhere in the world, including in Europe. 

"The health network is still fragile. We have to give ourselves the tools to protect the network and that's with vaccination," he said.

But Roxane Borges Da Silva, a professor at Université de Montréal's school of public health, said Dube's message is too positive. The situation is worsening in Europe, she said, adding that in France, nearly 95,000 new COVID-19 cases were detected Tuesday and hospitalizations have risen significantly.

"The context is not so reassuring," she said in an interview Wednesday, adding that the impact of new variants remains unknown and that the arrival of flu season at a time when COVID-19 hospitalizations are rising could put heavy pressure on Quebec's health-care system.

"Their positivism worries me, because it sends too positive a message compared to the uncertainty that we face this fall," she said about Dubé and Boileau.

Dubé said the best way to protect the health-care system is for people to get a COVID-19 vaccine booster, adding that anyone whose last shot was more than five months ago, or whose last infection was more than three months ago, should get another dose.

Da Silva said she thinks encouraging people to get vaccinated is the right message, but she added that more should be done to promote it.

"It's necessary to send a reassuring but strict, serious message that it is absolutely necessary to be vaccinated," she said.

Dr. Matthew Oughton, an infectious diseases specialist at Montreal's Jewish General Hospital, said this year's flu season is expected to come early and be harsher than usual because of a particularly severe influenza strain in circulation and because people have been less exposed than normal to that virus over the past two years.