Some public health and infectious disease experts are pressing for governments in Canada to shift to minimizing, not eradicating, COVID-19 while allowing society to resume functioning.
Some public health and infectious disease experts are pressing for governments in Canada to shift to minimizing, not eradicating, COVID-19 while allowing society to resume functioning.
The open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and all premiers, dated July 6, says aiming to prevent or contain every case is not sustainable at this stage in the pandemic.
“We need to accept that COVID-19 will be with us for some time and to find ways to deal with it,” the 18 experts wrote.
Signatories include Dr. Gregory Taylor, Dr. Theresa Tam’s immediate predecessor as Canada’s chief public health officer; Dr. David Butler-Jones, the first person to hold the post; Dr. Robert Bell, a former deputy health minister in Ontario; Dr. Onye Nnorom, president of the Black Physicians’ Association of Ontario; Dr. Vivek Goel, former president of Public Health Ontario; and Dr. Joel Kettner, a former chief public health officer for Manitoba.
“The people who suffer most are those in lower-income settings who are trapped in apartment buildings and who do not have a nice deck or a cottage to escape to,” said Dr. Neil Rau, an infectious disease physician and medical microbiologist at the University of Toronto who signed the letter.
The basis of lockdowns and physical distancing was to flatten the epidemic curve so that health-care systems wouldn’t be overwhelmed with too many case