Canada overtakes the US for the first time in daily Covid cases

Photographer: Cole Burston / Getty Images

For the first time since the start of the pandemic, Canada has passed a stark milestone, with more new Covid-19 cases per capita than the US.

There are about 22 of them new recordcases per 100,000 people in the country in the past 7 days. Ontario is hit hospitals under increasing pressure, especially in Toronto, the country’s largest city.

“This is the worst moment of the pandemic so far,” Kevin Smith, Chief Executive Officer of the University Health Network, said in an interview Monday. “Our ICUs are full.”

Ontario has ordered everything but emergency operations canceled in most of the county for the first time since March 2020. Patients scheduled for cancer, heart and brain surgeries must wait while intensive care units fill with Covid-19 patients. The hospital for sick children in Toronto has opened an overflow unit for the treatment of adults.

“When The Hospital For Sick Children provides ICU care to adults, you know you are going through one of the worst times of the pandemic,” Eileen de Villa, Toronto’s medical health officer, said in a statement. press conference Monday. “The old Covid-19 virus is being flattened by the B117 variant, while the other two variants are also present in Toronto.”

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

Re-deploy staff

About 1,300 patients have been transferred to hospitals in the county to deal with the attack of critical cases, Smith said. Hospitals are struggling to secure supplies of tocilizumab, a cancer drug that has improved Covid’s chances of survival, he said. And the UHN network may soon exceed its capacity to provide extracorporeal membrane oxygen, or ECMO, to Covid patients, an artificial heart and lung technology that can be used when a ventilator is insufficient.

Hospitals in Northern Ontario will likely have to cancel planned surgeries soon, Smith said, so that Covid patients can be transferred from the south to the north of the province. He expects his staff to be redeployed – ideally on a volunteer basis – to areas most needed in the coming week.

On Monday, Ontario Prime Minister Doug Ford bowed under pressure to close schools for personal learning until data shows the outbreak is abating, a decision that will put pressure on working parents at a time when people are already exhausted by the 13 months pandemic. -related limitations, in combination with a roll-out of the vaccine against fits and starts.

Covid fatigue

Friction between beleaguered health officials, desperate businesses and exhausted residents is increasing across Canada. Last weekend, Quebec police used tear gas on a handful of protesters after hundreds took to the streets in spite of an 8 p.m. curfew, burning a handful of trash and smashing windows, CBC News reported.

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

But nowhere was the tug of war between competing interests more evident than in Ontario, where Ford struggled to contain the virus without excluding business leaders. Delays in securing vaccines, evolving information about it security of the The dose of AstraZeneca and the more contagious nature of new variants has increased its challenges, resulting in shifting tactics and messaging. Complex color-coded lockdown restrictions – where ‘gray’ is more of a threat than ‘red’ – were accompanied by long lists of vaccine stages, detailed reopening stages and frequent changes and adjustments.