Torontonians’ vaccine eagerness has put city in an ‘enviable’ position for reopening, says public health chief

Thestar.com
July 22, 2021
David Rider

Torontonians’ enthusiasm for COVID-19 vaccines has put the city in a “unique and frankly enviable” position among global cities trying to reopen while the Delta virus variant is circulating.

That was the optimistic message Wednesday from Toronto public health chief Dr. Eileen de Villa, who noted almost 80 per cent of adults in the city have at least one dose of vaccine and 66 per cent of adults are fully vaccinated.

The city, and Ontario, have surged ahead of the national rate that puts Canada among the most vaccinated nations on earth.

“COVID-19 is surging again in many other places in the world and spreading unchecked in many more,” de Villa told reporters at a weekly pandemic briefing.

“But Toronto is in a unique and frankly enviable position compared to many other places. We’re able to talk more about what we can do than what we can’t.”

But de Villa said Toronto needs to keep boosting the vaccination rate. She endorsed her Ontario counterpart Dr. Kieran Moore’s ambitious target of getting 90 per cent of residents fully vaccinated to limit spread of highly infectious Delta.

City efforts include a change so that, as of Thursday, people can walk in to any of the city’s nine vaccination clinics from noon to 7 p.m. and get a first or second dose, up from four clinics offering walk-in as well as appointment service.

More pop-up and mobile clinics bringing vaccines to communities with lower-than-average uptake will include a mega-clinic this weekend at Mel Lastman Square in North York.

Anyone age 12 and over can book an appointment or just show up for the mass vaccination event running from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. People will get free entertainment, food and giveaways.

COVID-19 experts contacted by the Star agreed with de Villa that vaccinations have put Toronto in an enviable position -- but say infection and hospitalization numbers will rise again this fall if not before.

Kids going back to school and adults going back to workplaces will trigger increased COVID-19 spread, said Dr. Anna Banerji, an infectious diseases expert at University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health.

“The people who are going to get sick in the next wave are the unvaccinated, including younger children -- most of whom will have minimal symptoms but some will get really sick,” Banerji said.

“We will have more cases in the fall but it’s going to be a lot less than what we’ve seen” in previous waves, she said.

“At the end of the day all of us will have immunity from COVID whether it’s through the vaccine or from natural infection and immunity. That’s how COVID will eventually die out.”

Dr. Isaac Bogoch, a Toronto infectious diseases expert and member of Ontario’s vaccine task force, said it’s “absolutely incredible how far we’ve come and how great we’re doing now.

“It’s also fair to say we have to look into the crystal ball and, in the months ahead when more people are in indoor settings, this virus will find the unvaccinated -- it just will.

“We will see a rise in cases, hospitalizations and deaths -- proportionally more among the unvaxxed crowd. To what extent will that impact our health care system capacity and going about our day-to-day life -- I’m not sure. But the more people vaccinated, the less impact it will have.”

In fact COVID-19 spread, which has shrunk dramatically since the mid-April peak of the virus’s deadly third wave, appears to have started rising again, albeit slowly, amidst Ontario’s gradual reopening.

Toronto Public Health data shows the seven-day average of daily new infections increased by 6 per cent in the week ending last Saturday, after months of sustained weekly drops of between 18 per cent and 44 per cent.

But the seven-day average of 24 new daily infections is a tiny fraction of the mid-April peak of 1,320 cases. Also, the seven-day average for daily new COVID-19 hospitalizations has continued to fall, to 2.1.