EXPERTS: ''CIRCUIT BREAKER,'' CUTTING CONTACTS 50% NEEDED TO ''BLUNT'' OMICRON
Dec 16, 2021
By Bob Komsic
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The day after Ontario announced an acceleration in its COVID-19 booster strategy will include all adults starting Monday, the provincial Science Advisory Table says increasing vaccination is not enough to slow this wave.
That’s one of the projections in the group’s latest modelling.
Co-chair Dr. Adalsteinn Brown says a circuit breaker with public health measures that reduce contacts by 50% could ”blunt” the surge in Omicron cases.
”It’s specifically those things that reduce contacts, and so that may be capacity limitations in different settings. It may be strong enforcement of masking indoors,” adds Brown.
”It’s not really any sort of new things that we haven’t seen before.”
The science advisors say without any further measures there could be 10,000 daily cases before Christmas, and that hospital intensive care unit occupancy could reach unsustainable levels by early January.
The province is reporting 2,421 new cases – the most since mid-May.