Canada Covid-19: Variants have likely replaced the original virus in many parts of the country, health officials say

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“This is not the news that any of us wanted, but hospital admissions are on the rise, IC beds are getting full, variants are spreading, and even people who convinced themselves they shouldn’t have to worry are getting sick,” the report said. Canadian Prime Minister Justin. Trudeau said at a news conference Tuesday, adding that this is a “very serious” third wave of the pandemic.

Intensive care admissions are up 18% over the past week, and the new variants are putting “heavy pressure” on hospital capacity, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada.

“With increasing rates of infection, we are seeing a greater number of younger adults with Covid-19 being treated in the hospital,” said Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer. She added that more than 15,000 variant cases have been discovered to date, the vast majority of which are the B.1.1.7 variant first discovered in the United Kingdom.
In many counties now experiencing a third wave, chief public health officials report that younger patients are becoming seriously ill from Covid-19, and many of those cases have tested positive for troubling variants, according to Tam.

“Many of them deteriorate quite quickly and have to be admitted to the IC fairly immediately, and then they remain in the IC for quite a long time, which means there is also a capacity impact,” Tam said.

While hospital admissions have not increased dramatically, more of the admitted patients now require critical care, as variants make them more severely ill, she said.

In Toronto, public health officials have ordered all primary and secondary schools to stop personal learning and switch to distance learning as of Wednesday as they try to “reverse the wave of infection the province is currently facing,” said Toronto Public. Health.

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Ontario, of which Toronto is the capital, is debating new and more restrictive measures, including house arrest, as ICU capacity is increasingly strained.

The order will be effective April 7-18, according to guidelines issued Tuesday, and is subject to renewal.

“Today’s circumstances require tough decisions to be made on the ground to protect everyone in our school communities, including students, teachers and staff,” said Toronto Public Health.

British Columbia has moved to close the Whistler ski area and further curtail gatherings in the county, which is now also dealing with an outbreak of the virus among NHL hockey players with the Vancouver Canucks.

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The province of Alberta also confirmed that it is dealing with new clusters of cases related to the P.1 variant.

This week, Canada surpassed 1 million cases of Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic. Tam called that milestone a “grim reminder” of all that Canadians have experienced.

While the B.1.1.7 variant has now likely become the dominant variant in Canada, Tam said her team is also closely watching a major outbreak of the P.1 variant, which was first discovered in Brazil and now rising in some Western Canadian. provinces.

On Monday, British Columbia’s Secretary of Health said the number of cases of the P.1 variant in his province nearly doubled over the Easter weekend.

“The most permeable variants of Covid-19 will eventually take over,” Adrian Dix said in an update on Monday.

CNN’s Elizabeth Stuart and Theresa Waldrop contributed to this report.

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