Canada exceeds 800 thousand cases of Covid-19, but in the Atlantic, the situation is under control
Photo: Susan Kirkland, Head of the Department of Epidemiology at Dalhousie University, Halifax
The world continues to enact new closures, policies and lockdowns to contain the outbreak of Covid-19, while the bubble with which the Canadian Atlantic is protected seems to have an effect. Even as the rest of Canada has crossed another daunting threshold with more than 800,000 cases, the Atlantic region continues its pace of life.
As of February 16, the national Covid-19 case count reached 826,779 and 21,311 deaths. The provinces of Quebec and Ontario top the list of deaths with 10,229 and 6,693, respectively. Meanwhile in the Atlantic region of Canada, with a population of 2.3 million, fewer than 100 deaths are reported.
The example of American New Zealand
The relatively low number of infections in eastern Canada has caught the world’s attention and has been regarded as “American New Zealand.” And it seems that this Atlantic region, made up of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Prince Edward Island has been protected by a kind of bubble.
Susan Kirkland, head of the Department of Epidemiology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, explained in an interview that the success of the Atlantic bubble “is due as much to circumstances as to geography.” The region has a population of just 2.3 million people who live on a land area twice that of the United Kingdom.
“Something that also worked in our favour is that the area is made up of islands and peninsulas, with only two entry routes from the rest of the country, which has led to fewer opportunities for the transmission of the virus,” she explained.
Kirkland, who is also a member of the Nova Scotia province COVID-19 task force, said the prompt response from authorities was one of the most successful things they did. People who are not from this Atlantic region consider that the restrictions and closures were very strict, but frankly those measures have worked very well for us.”
When the pandemic began, public health authorities on the East Coast realized that local health systems could not cope with the increasing cases, so they quickly imposed a series of restrictions, including the closure of sites. public and schools, provincial border closures to any non-essential travel, and imposed a two-week quarantine period for those entering the region.
“We focus on the populations with the highest level of risk. We not only take care of the elderly, but we also launched a Covid-19 detection system in young people, who were the group that was leaving and that resonated with the population,” she added.
“Our intention was that within the bubble there could be movement and flow through the four provinces so as not to slow down economic activity and tourism in the region,” Kirkland said.
People are still wearing masks and being cautious, and life is far from normal inside the bubble, but those who go out to work and do their activities can do so with relative confidence as the chances of contagion are low.
Advantages of the geographic bubble
Although Kirkland believes that the bubbles were a great public health tool, he cautioned that care should be taken not to use them as a pretext for other purposes. Also, like so much about Covid-19, even effective geographic bubbles have their potential drawbacks.
Kirkland said that the low spread of Covid-19 within the Atlantic Bubble can have positive consequences, but also negative consequences. “We have avoided Covid-19 and that is very good, but it also means that practically the entire population is at risk of getting infected because it has not developed any immunity, “she explained.
The combination of the opening of borders and the relaxation of measures, together with the delays in the arrival of the vaccine that is not expected to reach the general population until April of this year could lead Canada to a third massive wave, Kirkland said.