Canada COVID cases rising quickly, rapid tests heading to provinces: feds
Posted January 7, 2022 9:40 am.
Last Updated January 7, 2022 10:14 am.
Omicron is pushing Canada’s infection rates higher than ever before, putting more stress on health-care systems.
Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam says the variant is now the dominant strain of COVID-19 in Canada. She says the week-over-week case count increase is a whopping 65 per cent.
Despite this, Tam notes hospitalizations are not increasing at the same rate.
“Given current daily case counts are already about 400 per cent higher than the peak of the third wave, it is not unexpected to see daily hospitalizations rising. However, international surveillance suggests that while these trends can be expected to increase with the Omicron surge, severe illnesses are not rising at the same explosive rate,” she said Friday.
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Meanwhile, in an effort to help provinces and territories through this latest wave, the Trudeau government says new rapid tests are being rolled out. This comes just days after it was announced 140 million new rapid tests would be distributed this month.
“Rapid antigen tests are an important tool to empower individual Canadians to cut the spread of the Omicron variant,” said Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos.
Health Minister @jyduclos says rapid tests are already being delivered to the provinces after the feds promised Wednesday to ship 140-million RATs in the month of January #cdnpoli
— Cormac Mac Sweeney (@cmaconthehill) January 7, 2022
Health-care and testing systems have been put under immense strain over the past several weeks amid the spread of Omicron. This pressure has forced some provinces, like Ontario, to change testing protocols to recognize rapid test results.
Tam says although testing capacity is challenged in many areas — meaning case numbers are underestimated — other indicators such as laboratory test positivity and hospitalizations are being used to measure the progress of the virus.
Of the PCR tests that are coming back, 29 per cent are positive, signifying massive community spread.
Related video: Canadian company working to meet COVID-19 rapid test demand
The federal government says it’s in talks with several provinces and expects more requests from premiers for emergency assistance in the weeks ahead.
Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc says while the federal government knows systems are stretched thin, there may be a limit to what Ottawa can offer.
“Provincial and territorial governments have considerably more health, human resources, for example, than would the Government of Canada, and that’s why we need to be expeditious and effective in allocating all the federal resources we can,” he said.
Minister Leblanc suggests federal resources are not limitless, and they will have to assess all the requests as they come in and allocate resources in the most effective way #cdnpoli
— Cormac Mac Sweeney (@cmaconthehill) January 7, 2022
LeBlanc stressed the importance of vaccination, urging Canadians to roll up their sleeves if they are able to and have not yet received a shot.
-With files from The Canadian Press
