The national public health agency is preparing for "worst-case scenario" COVID-19 variants that can evade immunity, Canada's top doctor told members of Parliament Tuesday, as early signs point to a fall resurgence of the virus.
At the House of Commons health committee, Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam said the Public Health Agency of Canada is keeping a particularly careful eye on the evolution of Omicron variants, which are the most common subvariants in the country, along with any new mutations.
"We haven't detected any very extraordinary appearances as yet, but that is a scenario that we're planning ahead for," Tam said during her virtual appearance at the committee.
In the early days of the pandemic, the virus would mutate in all sorts of ways because people did not have immunity from previous infections or vaccines.
Now, because the virus has been constrained, several subvariants of Omicron have begun to develop identical mutations — a phenomenon known as evolutionary convergence.
"When there's broad population immunity, it puts pressure on the virus to find advantages, such as escaping our existing immunity," Tam said.
The worst-case scenario, Tam said, is that eventually a variant will find a way to sidestep the effectiveness of vaccines and treatment with monoclonal antibodies.
"We haven't detected one of those yet, but we need to be prepared for the potential," she said.
The COVID-19 situation in Canada has remained relatively steady as of the first week of October, even as the weather has cooled and students have returned to school. Early signs are beginning to show a potential resurgence, Tam said, with the number of hospitalizations increasing in some parts of the country.
In the meantime, only 18 per cent of eligible Canadians are up-to-date on their vaccinations with a two-dose primary series and a booster within the last six months, Tam said.
"The good news is that we do have these bivalent vaccines," which target both the original strain of COVID-19 and more recent offshoots, Tam said. So far about five per cent of eligible Canadians have received a bivalent shot.
She said the agency is working on building momentum around those new vaccines to try to increase the number of people who get the shot this fall.
But Tam took a barrage of criticism from Conservative members of the committee over her communication throughout the pandemic, as MPs charged that the public has "lost trust" in institutions like the public health agency.
If another really bad virus came along that required lockdowns and other measures, "Canadians wouldn't listen to you," Saskatchewan Conservative MP Randy Hoback said to Tam.
"They would say 'Never. We're never doing this again. We don't trust you, we don't listen to you.' And we'd see then the massive deaths that would be the result."
Alberta MP Laila Goodridge told Tam there was a disconnect between the public health agency's advice and what she hears about daily life in rural Canada, and suggested the chief public health officer visit those places in person.
Several MPs asked Tam whether there would be a post-mortem of Canada's COVID-19 response. Tam agreed it will be important to review and learn lessons from how the country handled the virus, but wouldn't comment on any specific plans.
"We've just been through the biggest pandemic of the current era and it is very important to take note of lessons learned and be as objective as we can," Tam said.
"It's important to set us up well for our response going into the future, given that pandemics will occur again."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 18, 2022.
Comments
Tam has been ineffective from the get go. her advice has always been weak, late and she is not a good communicator. She was against masking for months! for gods sake, they still barely admit covid is airborne!!
Billionaire press gives more air time to idiots and chaos makers like those quoted from Saskatchewan. Business thinks it can make more money if it ignores covid and considers workers are expendable and replaceable.
who benefits from this incompetence in health canada when the best analysis says strengthening the caring economy, health, education, childcare is the real way forward.
Those Conservative bastards really have no shame. They're basically saying "We totally undermined you, made tons of false claims so people wouldn't trust you, made it politically impossible to do the best things--so now it's your fault if people die because they don't trust you!"
I agree Rufus. We have just been through (and still are experiencing) the worst pandemic in a century and people choose to criticize the messengers, the health officials who are trying to keep us safe and prevent deaths. Sure they have made mistakes- who wouldn't have?
Regarding mask wearing, yes Tam was slow to recommend it. I'm not sure if this was because she was waiting for more evidence to support mask wearing or some other reason.
Now health officials are trying to warn us about the dangers of another Covid wave and no one is listening. Politicians seem afraid to do anything because of the backlash that will come from anti-vaxxers and the Conservatives who support them. A sad situation.
And the new premier of Alberta has just fired the CEO of Alberta Heath Services and Dr. Deena Henshaw. She also plans to remove the entire AHS Board. Shameful!
I think part of the problem from the beginning is that Tam didn't have a handle on her job description, on the measures that could be recommended, etc.,
I was a bit shocked, myself, to find that Public Health wasn't ordering measures, but instead there was a political layer of filtering and ... unh ... adjusting. I was even more shocked to find that people who should have known better didn't bother to find out what the history was of measures previously taken around epidemics, especially when there was no known cure, as was the case for most severe infectious diseases before antibiotics became readily and routinely used.
But a whole lot better could have been done by all levels of government.
And much, much better could have been done by our police. Kind of same as with the FreeDumb Con.