Invited by the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal on Wednesday, Dr. living with the virus
as is now the accepted expression.
Karl Weiss notes that the gradual deconfinement here as elsewhere has not had a major impact and that it is time to breathe more easily.
We saw what was happening in the other provinces, in the countries, we saw that there was no major impact on the functioning of society, so yes, at some point, we had to stop play the catastrophic and dark scenario by saying that everything was going to collapse.
It will therefore no longer be appropriate to speak of vague
when a possible COVID 6.0
, according to its expression, but well of an endemic situation in the same way as the flu. However, he clarified that the traditional concept of herd immunity no longer applies in the case of COVID-19.
« The concept of herd immunity for COVID is outdated. It is no longer something that we should be looking at now, because yes, collective immunity, we have reached it. […] There is a huge proportion of the Quebec population who have had vaccines, who have had COVID, who have had both. We’ve never had anything in our history where we’ve had so much immunity, with the possible exception of chickenpox. »
In the future, our response to this virus is likely to be much less disease intensive. So we won’t be sick. As we will not be sick, the probability is that we will have less impact on the hospital system, and therefore, the impact on the overall system will be much lower.
Omicron has changed the game
According to him, the explosion of cases and hospitalizations caused by the Omicron variant has at the same time changed the situation.
The mortality rate was much lower than in previous waves, so we see that Omicron finally made a kind of exchange: he became, in quotes, less virulent once morest an increase in his transmissibility, which we see often with viruses.
In addition, while catching one of the previous variants did not protect once morest Omicron, studies show that contracting Omicron does protect once morest the previous variants.
And the pandemic fire caused by Omicron is likely to have benefits relative to the emergence of new variants, according to Dr. Weiss.
Omicron is such a good recipe for the virus that the virus may not want to change it too much. […] Yes, we will have sub-variants, yes, we will possibly have other emerging variants, but the impact on society will no longer be the same as what we experienced at the very beginning of COVID.
Unknown elements of the virus
According to him, however, we must avoid considering COVID-19 as the new influenza.
It’s not quite a new influenza, because it’s a more inflammatory virus. There is the whole long COVID syndrome, which is in its infancy and of which we do not yet know all the outcomes. There is a higher mortality. There is a transmission which is done by aerosols. Unlike the flu, aerosols means that we can transmit the virus over much greater distances, but unlike the flu, we have many more vaccines of much better quality than once morest the flu and many more drugs coming onto the market or regarding to do so.
The latest wave has highlighted the need to add more flexibility to the Quebec hospital network, which has fewer beds per inhabitant than almost all of the developed countries.
Karl Weiss also believes that it will be necessary to adopt a different approach where we will have to have tests more easily in the workplace. Maybe we should create integrated outpatient COVID treatment centers. […] And set up, a little like we do in military systems, an early warning system that allows us to see what is going to happen with great flexibility in the local application.
The Quebec hospital network has fewer beds per capita than almost all developed countries, according to Dr. Weiss.
Photo : getty images/istockphoto / beerkoff
A social and economic cost
The objective is to no longer hospitalize people. We want to hospitalize as few people as possible. We have more and more treatment tools that will allow us to keep patients on an outpatient basis. So we want to target the people most at risk, give them medication as quickly as possible to prevent them from ending up in hospital. If the hospital environment is not overflowing, then there is no longer any reason to close the company
he concludes.
Dr. Weiss warns, however, that due to the pandemic, the network has neglected psychology and surgeries, in particular, which will have a social and even economic cost for companies.
For example, he says, an employee who was unable to get knee surgery and whose condition worsened is likely to be absent longer in the future. There will be a catch-up phase which will be difficult.
