If Quebec continues to beat the record for new daily cases of COVID-19 in recent days, the real number would be much higher in the province, which might not see a lull until mid-January, according to the epidemiologist Nimâ Machouf.
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“We must dispose of all the contacts we had during the holidays, they will come forward, people will be tested and will be positive,” she said in an interview on Sunday at LCN.
Stating that the current data is underestimated, the epidemiologist believes that it will be possible to see a decrease in cases at the start of the school year in January.
Ms. Machouf acknowledged, however, that Quebec is not yet out of the woods, as evidenced by the lack of resources in hospitals and screening centers.
“We have no more resources, no more people in the hospital to take care of all this and in the screening centers it’s the same thing, we really have to be careful”, he said. she pointed out.
“If you think that there are 40,000 people who are infected per day, imagine what percentage of that are people who are in the health system, so that means not just hospital beds that it takes us, but it takes us staff to run these hospitals, ”added the specialist.
And the load shedding that is already observed in the Quebec region would only be the tip of the iceberg, according to the epidemiologist, who said that this trend will continue as long as health personnel are infected with the virus.
“Now it is no longer true that there is offloading because we have to reserve recovery rooms or intensive care for cases of COVID, but it is also that we no longer have staff for take care of the world, ”she insisted.
Quebec has maintained that it wants to accelerate the pace of the administration of the 3rd dose from January by making it available to the general population.
A decision that would therefore reduce the complications related to this infection, and consequently the number of hospitalizations and overflows, according to Nimâ Machouf.
“If you look at the people who are vaccinated, we will get COVID, but the damage is much less and COVID becomes a bit like a cold in terms of the short-term effect,” she explained. .
The epidemiologist, however, warned regarding the long-term effects of the Omicron variant, which it is not yet possible to assess.
“If ever in the long term, we see that there are as many long-term COVIDs in people who are infected with Omicron as in other strains, at that time, Omicron is like a Trojan horse, we have the ‘impression that it is light, but at the end of the day we are going to have a lot of chronic problems, ”she said.
Reducing the number of contacts therefore remains the solution to reduce the risk of transmission, according to Ms. Machouf.
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