Canada surpasses US with more new virus cases per 100,000 people

OTTAWA • For the first time since the pandemic began, Canada has passed a grim milestone, with more new Covid-19 cases per 100,000 people than in the United States.

There have been roughly 22 new recorded cases per 100,000 in the country over the past seven days, compared with 21 such cases per 100,000 in the US.

Ontario is the hardest hit, with hospitals coming under increasing strain, especially in Toronto, the country's largest city.

"This is the worst moment of the pandemic thus far," Dr Kevin Smith, chief executive of the University Health Network (UHN), said. "Our ICUs are full."

Ontario has ordered all but emergency operations cancelled across most of the province for the first time since March last year.

Patients scheduled for cancer, cardiac and brain surgery are being told to wait as intensive care units fill with Covid-19 patients.

Toronto's The Hospital for Sick Children has opened an overflow unit to treat adults.

Dr Eileen de Villa, Toronto's medical officer of health, said on Monday: "When The Hospital For Sick Children is providing ICU care to adults, you know you're living through one of the worst periods of the pandemic.

"The old Covid-19 virus is being bulldozed by the B117 variant, with the other two variants present in Toronto as well."

Toronto recorded 1,296 new cases on Monday and could see 2,500 new Covid-19 cases a day by the end of the month at the current rate, health officials warned on Monday.

About 1,300 patients have been moved to hospitals across the province to handle the onslaught of critical cases, Dr Smith said.

Hospitals are struggling to get supplies of tocilizumab, a cancer drug that has improved survival rates for Covid-19 patients.

The UHN may soon exceed its capacity to offer extracorporeal membrane oxygenation - an artificial heart and lung technology that can be used when a ventilator is insufficient - to Covid-19 patients.

Hospitals in Northern Ontario will likely need to cancel scheduled operations soon, Dr Smith said, so that Covid-19 patients can be transferred from the south to the north of the province.

Within next week, he expects his staff will be redeployed to areas of most need.

On Monday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford bowed to pressure to close schools for in-person learning until data shows the outbreak is easing, a decision that will add to pressure on working parents at a time when people are exhausted by the 13 months of curbs, coupled with a fitful vaccine roll-out.

Friction between beleaguered health officials, desperate businesses and exhausted residents has been on the rise across Canada.

Last weekend, Quebec police used tear gas on a handful of protesters after hundreds took to the streets in defiance of an 8pm curfew, with a handful setting fire to garbage and shattering windows.

On Monday, health officials in British Columbia said that the number of patients in critical care has risen to a record high.

But nowhere has the tug of war between competing interests been more apparent than in Ontario, where Mr Ford has struggled to contain the virus without antagonising business leaders.

Delays securing vaccines, evolving information about the safety of the AstraZeneca dose and the more infectious nature of new variants have added to his challenges, resulting in shifting tactics and messaging.

Health officials knew it was always going to be a race to get people vaccinated before the third wave caught hold, Dr Smith said.

Having lost that race, Canada should be imposing more "rigorous" measures, including restricting regional, inter-provincial and international travel for the next four to six weeks to contain the spread of more infectious variants until vaccination efforts take hold.

"These are the worst days of this pandemic and I believe now is not the time to lighten up on anything but frankly to hunker down," he said.

"We're only going to regret what we don't do from this point forward."

BLOOMBERG