TORONTO – “The time has come to review the capacity limits. After a plateau in the number of infections, the province has returned to the fourth wave of the pandemic”. 

Since the Covid-19 infections in Ontario are rising again, the director of the Science Advisory Table of the province Peter Juni (in the pic above) has said clearly and roundly that, to avoid a worsening of the situation, it would be good for the government to first review some capacity limits. “The second honeymoon is over. We just have to be aware of what is happening. On the one hand, we have raised the capacity limits in sports arenas and restaurants and, on the other, the temperature has dropped – said Dr. Juni – the result of all this is an exponential growth of cases in the province”.

Despite the elimination of many restrictions by the provincial government, it is necessary to keep in mind that the pandemic is still among us and some lightness is enough to increase the number of hospitalizations, intensive care and unfortunately also that of deaths. Covid is still lurking and Juni said this is the right time to remind people to follow Covid measures such as the use of masks and the vaccination certificate. “We cannot delay and we cannot pretend that the pandemic is over – he said – if we behave in the right way, we will continue on the right path”.

Ontario’s average of seven days of daily infections, through Monday, is 476 compared to 371 the previous week. The province recorded 563 daily cases on Friday, 508 on Saturday, 636 cases on Sunday, 480 on Monday and 441 yesterday. The Covid-19 curve, according to the Ontario Science Advisory Table, signals that cases double after 17 days, meaning that in just over two weeks, if the trend continues, the province could see on average about 1,000 cases per day. “Restaurants, as well as sports arenas, will not like to hear that capacity limits need to be imposed again, but it may happen that in a few weeks we need to deal with this difficult situation,” said the director of the Ontario Science Table.

Juni said that in addition to fine-tuning capacity limits and strengthening safety measures against the pandemic, vaccinating children and administering booster doses to the most fragile will also help keep cases and hospitalizations low. “Things are not dramatic because the number of hospitalizations and intensive care at the moment are low – concluded Dr. Juni – if we follow the wrong path … there comes a time when there will be hospitalizations and hospitalizations in intensive care and we do not want this to happen”.