Omicron in January: ‘We must prepare for the worst,’ says a doctor

January is likely to be tough in Quebec in terms of hospitalization, not only with the recent increase in delta variant cases, and the arrival of the omicron variant, but also with the third dose long overdue for good. part of the population.

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At least that’s what d^s Carl Weiss, a microbiologist and infectious disease specialist at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal.

“You have to prepare for the worst and hope for the best. The point is to try to do everything to minimize the impact. January is always tough. There, it might be more difficult with a new variant, with a group that is not so heavily protected with its third dose, even if we have a well-protected group.” General well,” explained Dr^s Weiss gave an interview Tuesday on The Mario Dumont Show.

• Hear from public policy analyst Patrick Deere with Benoit Dautrezac on QUB Radio:

Although Quebecers have been very disciplined and vaccinated, the virus has not said its last word.

“It will be up to Quebecers to make sense, but obviously at the beginning of January there may be the sum of all risks with a cocktail. We will have to prepare for that, but if we vaccinate a lot, we will be able to reduce the impact,” he believes.

If the Minister of Health, Christian Duby, raises the probability of daily cases of COVID-19 rising to 3,000, it is not impossible to see them reach 4,000 or 5,000 with the Omicron variant, according to D^s Weiss.

The number of critical patients will be a determining factor. If we have 5,000 cases, but only 500 in the hospital, that’s definitely a lot, but it’s still manageable. On the other hand, if we have 1,500 hospitalizations… that’s a different scenario,” he gave as an example.

It is likely that there will already be dozens of cases of Omicron in Quebec, the variant that is likely to be prevalent in the province over the next few weeks, according to the doctor.

By comparison, Britain, which had only one case of Omicron at the end of November, has now passed 4,700 cases.

“In Quebec, we must speed up the mass vaccination campaign with the third dose. I insist we are procrastinating too much.”

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