Public health officials in Huron-Perth strongly recommend masking up this flu season, especially if you’re indoors with someone at high risk of severe illness.
But will Ontario consider reintroducing broader mask mandates similar to the ones handed down at the height of the COVID-19 crisis? It might not be a bad idea, Dr. Miriam Klassen, Huron-Perth’s medical officer of health, said this week.
“Certainly that’s a conversation that’s very active right now,” Klassen said. “Whether it’s needed this very second, I don’t know. Whether it could become needed, I think that’s very possible to help, again, our health-care system stay functional. We’ve seen when everybody does (wear masks) at a population level, it makes a big difference.”
Huron Perth public health is encouraging people to take a “layered” approach to protecting themselves this flu season, which is expected to be complicated as various viruses begin to circulate at the same time. Wearing a mask for 10 days after the start of respiratory illness symptoms, a positive COVID-19 test result or exposure to someone with COVID-19 is part of that advice, along with washing your hands and staying up to date with vaccines.
“When I go out into public spaces right now, I’m wearing a mask,” Klassen said. “I have a granddaughter, I have a dad, and I don’t want to get sick. I want to be able to see them. I know it’s not 100 per cent, but it’s going to decrease my risk.”
Some experts in Ontario want to go further.
Emergency rooms across the province had to close for hours or days at a time throughout the summer, with some closures persisting now. Many ERs are reporting high patient volumes and long wait times, with children’s hospitals in particular reporting high demand.
The kind of strain seen through August and September is normally seen in the midst of a bad flu season, which is worrying, said Dr. Fahad Razak, the former head of the province’s science table. Health-care workers and the system itself have been under relentless strain for nearly three years and there is “very little capacity” to respond to accelerating COVID-19 cases, Razak said.
“Personally, I would say that the criteria to require something like a mask mandate is clearly here,” added Razak, an internist at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. “For anyone who says, ‘Let’s not do that,’ I would ask, ‘What is the alternative at this point? How do we keep the system that has so little capacity, how do we get it to continue to run over the winter?”
COVID-19 activity in the province is generally stable, according to a Public Health Ontario report, though it has been gradually increasing since early September. The virus’s BQ subvariants, however, have a high-risk potential for transmissibility, reinfection and lowered vaccine effectiveness, the report said.
Dr. Zain Chagla, an infectious disease specialist at St. Joseph’s Healthcare in Hamilton, said Ontario will likely see a BQ-driven wave, as Europe has, though one that may be short lived. Still, he did not recommend a return to mask mandates right now.
“Masking is always controversial,” Chagla said. “I think we have to evaluate how much the population is willing to do it and how much you can recommend versus other interventions, but I think it’s probably the last thing to pull in terms of all of this.”
It is important to ensure that people older than 60 or who are immunocompromised get COVID-19 booster doses, he said.
“Not to say that it’s time to panic, but it is time for especially the highest risk populations to make sure that they’re up to date with immunity and accessing treatments to keep them away from hospitals,” Chagla said. “There’s a lot going on, right? So there is obviously I think the modeling for this year’s flu season is not looking pretty at all.”
Huron-Perth public health reported the region’s first confirmed case of influenza in a Huron County resident on Friday.
More have been confirmed since, Klassen said.
Flu shots for Ontarians six months and older became available Tuesday.
“I don’t’ know what to expect but I hope (uptake is) high,” Klassen said. “I hope people are hearing our message and they’re lining up for another safe, effective vaccine that can help decrease their risk and be another added layer to help them feel like they’re taking all the measures that they can.”
-With files from the Canadian Press