Sinthia Hoque:– According to the scientific director of the Ontario science table, the province may require a harsher third lockdown due to the growing number of the B.1.1.7 variant cases.
In an interview with CTV News, Dr. Peter Jüni mentions that the province is currently experiencing “two pandemics” at the same time and with older “variants” of the virus well under control, the variant, B.1.1.7, first found in the United Kingdom seems too be increasing in number of daily cases.
“We keep having the old variants under control, cases are plummeting, that’s all good but the problem is we don’t have the new one under control and therefore we start talking about a pandemic within a pandemic”, said Dr. Peter Jüni.
“We need once more, firmer restrictions-firmer than before actually”, Jüni said. “If we lockdown once more it will be the last time we have to do that”.
Jüni and other members of the science table have spent the last four weeks giving warnings about the variants of concern and how it may ruin efforts to curb COVID-19 infection.
The current calculations show that the so called “wild” or “early,” variants of COVID-19 are receding and according to this, it means that 10 infected persons will go on to infect 9 other’s.
Amongst the variant of concern cases, 40 per cent of all infections in Ontario had a reproduction number of 1.24 causing a rapid change.
News source: cp24
