A top U.S. health expert who was among the first to sound the alarm for the Covid-19 outbreak last year is now raising concerns about the spread of the Brazilian variant of the virus (P.1) in Canada and warning that Canada is acting too slowly.
Photo credit: Global News
Chinese-born expert Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and senior fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health and the Federation of American Scientists, warned in January 2020 that the new coronavirus would become a “thermonuclear public health crisis.
He said, “We’ve known about the variant virus for some time, but people are not willing to follow the science.”
In the past two weeks, he has focused on the outbreak of P.1 variant cases in several Canadian provinces. The variant virus has now spread rapidly in British Columbia and has taken hold in Alberta and Ontario.
A study led by the Brazilian research institute Observatório COVID-19 BR showed that the P.1 variant virus is 2.5 times more infectious than the original COVID-19 virus. Another study conducted in Manaus found that the city was hit hard by the P.1 virus, with 25 to 60 out of every 100 people recovering from COVID-19 likely to be reinfected once exposed.
As of Monday, the number of cases of the P.1 variant in British Columbia, Canada, had skyrocketed to 737, double the number before the Easter long weekend. The number of patients in the ICU wards of BC hospitals was 96, a record high.
Ding Liang warned about the outbreak in B.C. on March 26. He said on CNN that the province is already seeing more new P.1 cases per day than the total number of new cases in the U.S. on a single day.
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Image source: Twitter
He also noted that 84 new cases of P.1 were reported in BC on a single day on March 24, none of which were related to travel, indicating that the P.1 virus has spread within the community.
Currently, the new crown epidemic in Brazil is quite severe, with an average of more than 3,000 deaths per day.
Image source: Twitter
BC’s Chief Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry has ordered a ban on dine-in restaurants on March 29 and required students in elementary schools from grade 4 and all teachers to wear masks. Previously, BC only recommended that elementary school students wear masks. henry also said that the school’s prevention regulations will have to be revisited after April 19.
Ding Liang pointed out that this is an incomprehensible mistake.
“It’s important to follow the science. You need to keep up with the rapidly changing and updated science. As chief public health officer, that’s your job.”
Dingliang’s advice is also aimed at health officers in Ontario and Alaska. There are currently 120 cases of the P.1 variant in Ontario.
He noted that vaccination needs to be accompanied by a tightening of public health measures and that a two-pronged approach is necessary because P.1 is more transmissible, more deadly and requires a higher percentage of the population to be vaccinated.
But right now Canada’s vaccination rates are far from adequate.
“Even if the required vaccination rate is achieved, it will only slow the outbreak of the virus, not stop its spread.”
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