High rates of COVID are causing outbreaks, rising hospitalizations and deaths heading into the school year

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If it seems like many of your friends and neighbours have been sick with COVID this summer, you are not wrong.

Ottawa is experiencing a COVID-19 wave that is sending people to hospital, causing outbreaks in long-term care homes, retirement homes and hospital wards, and even causing deaths among some of the most vulnerable. At least one local hospital has tightened masking requirements following outbreaks there, and Ottawa Public Health is advising students to take precautions when they head back to school, including staying home when sick and wearing masks for their own protection and the protection of others.

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Health Canada, meanwhile, is expediting its review of three updated vaccines that target the variants driving the current surge.

Relatively high rates of COVID seem likely to continue into the school year which comes during a period of increased fall social activity — a recipe for even more spread.

According to the most recent data from Ottawa Public Health, at least six Ottawa residents died of COVID-19 during the first part of August. Seven people died in July. During the week ending Aug. 18, 44 people were admitted to local hospitals with COVID-19 and there were 15 new and 11 ongoing COVID-19 outbreaks in Ottawa long-term care homes, retirement homes and hospitals, a number considered high. Eighty-two per cent of people admitted to hospital with COVID-19 were over the age of 60.

Unlike most communities in Ontario, Ottawa continues to track the virus that causes COVID-19 through wastewater. The Ontario government stopped funding the province’s internationally recognized wastewater surveillance program as of the end of July. Ottawa is one of just a small handful of communities that is continuing to track wastewater, for now. Extended funding for Ottawa’s wastewater surveillance program runs out at the end of September.

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For now, that gives Ottawa Public Health officials a more accurate look at the amount of COVID-19 circulating in the community. Wastewater readings, which are at levels not seen since last winter, can serve as an early indicator for possible outbreaks.  At a time when few people are being tested, wastewater surveillance, along with hospitalizations and outbreak numbers, provide a snapshot of the level of COVID-19 in the community.

And in Ottawa right now, it is high — not near the peak last winter, but high and continuing to spread.

Unlike many other respiratory illnesses, COVID-19 is not seasonal. Summer waves, generally smaller than fall or winter waves, have been a feature throughout the pandemic. But this year’s is bigger than most in some parts of North America.

The summer COVID wave is being driven by new variants known as FLiRT (named after technical names for their mutations). In the U.S., some states are seeing the highest summer surges of COVID-19 in years. Surges in infections led to the recent closure of two schools, one in Alabama and one in Tennessee, which returned to remote learning.

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The new variants “have an extraordinary ability to bypass previous immunity,” said uOttawa epidemiologist Raywat Deonandan. They don’t necessarily make people sicker, but they have the ability to infect more people, which represents a threat to those who are most vulnerable to more severe outcomes from COVID-19 infections.

The wave comes at a time when just 23 per cent of Ottawa residents have received a COVID-19 vaccine since last September. The vast majority of people under the age of 60 have not been vaccinated in the past year. Vaccination rates are as high as 69 per cent for older residents, nowhere near earlier vaccination rates. Many people, though, have an added layer of immunity from previous infections.

The Ontario government offered a limited vaccination rollout last spring for older adults and those with compromised immune system. The planned fall vaccination campaign will include updated vaccines for the general population.

Last week, amid a substantial summer surge that is infecting more than one million people a day, according to some models, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved updated mRNA COVID-19 vaccines that more closely target the circulating virus strains than previous vaccines. Those vaccines are expected to begin rolling out in a matter of days. The U.S. government will also begin distributing free COVID tests by mail beginning later in September.

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Health Canada is reviewing submissions from Pfizer and Moderna for vaccines that target the KP.2 strain, according to a statement. It is also reviewing a submission from Novavax for a COVID-19 vaccine targeting the JN.2 strain. Those reviews are being done on an expedited timeline, said Health Canada spokesperson Anna Maddison. She said Health Canada is aiming to complete the review within 75-100 days, compared to the “performance standard” of 180 days. Pfizer and Moderna produce mRNA vaccines. Novavax is a traditional protein subunit vaccine, which some people prefer.

Health Canada says it will authorize the vaccines if, following an independent scientific review of the evidence, it determines they meet safety, quality and efficacy standards.

Health Canada did not respond directly to questions about whether the vaccine rollout could be expedited given current levels of COVID-19.

Given immunity from previous infections and vaccines, Deonandan of uOttawa said there is little sense that the current COVID-19 wave could “reach crisis levels” seen earlier in the pandemic when hospitals had difficulty coping.

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“It is not the existential threat to society that it once was, but it is still a threat to lots of people, so we should take it seriously.”

He noted that many people feel they have already been vaccinated, but the virus that causes COVID-19 changes so frequently that updated vaccines are needed for protection.

“People don’t understand that COVID is in the top 10 list of killers in North America and globally, including in children.”

He said he struggles to understand why information about COVID-19 levels, from wastewater and elsewhere, is increasingly impossible to come by.

“The bottom line is if you are going to ask people to do their own risk management then give them the information they need.”

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