Wednesday marked a new era in New Brunswick’s management of the COVID-19 pandemic – one the province’s top doctor calls transitional.
The province limited access to PCR testing and cutback isolation periods at 11:59 Tuesday night as the Omicron variant continues to run rampant and apply pressure to health-care systems beyond New Brunswick’s borders.
READ MORE: COVID-19: 3 more deaths in N.B. as hospitalizations rise to almost 60
“We’ve had to pivot and change based on the properties Omicron is displaying right now,” says Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Jennifer Russell.
“It’s about balancing those risks with what the health-care system needs and what critical infrastructure needs are and what mental health needs are,” she says.
Shifts towards relying on point-of-care testing (a.k.a. rapid tests) and getting once-infected individuals back to work sooner are seen as big steps towards living with COVID.
“It’s a difficult transition, there’s no question,” Russell says.
A difficulty, she says, being felt within her own team as New Brunswick’s COVID measures shift.
“We wanted to really make sure that our staff felt like this was not a failure, this was not a reflection of us not being able to do what we need to do.
“We are doing what we need to do based on the new data, based on the new risks and this is what’s required across the country in terms of that shift,” she says.
Conversations with her public health counterparts across Canada, she says, are taking place “at least” twice a week.
Which she says grounds moves at a provincial level in science – not politics.
Pandemic vs. endemic
Another Dr. Russell – virologist Rodney Russell – says the science does indeed support steps towards living with the virus among us.
“It seems like this virus is going to be part of our common cold-seasonal viruses group,” he says.
A professor of Virology and Immunology at Memorial University in Newfoundland, Rodney Russell says he hopes we’re in the endgame now – with the pandemic potentially becoming endemic.
“I think people thought that this would end one day,” he says. “I think this is the beginning of really having no choice but to live with this.”
He says when we reach the endemic phase, individuals will need to assess their own personal risk with the virus.
Pandemic – featuring the prefix “pan” meaning all, is used to describe COVID-19 globally.
Endemic’s “end” prefix means within, inside or internal – a point at which we could expect to see flare-ups of the virus more regionally or seasonally.
“Life has to go on at some point,” Rodney Russell says.
“Now, if (Omicron) truly is a less severe virus, then we are going to move in that direction.”
Acknowledging the unpopularity of the statement, he says odds are everyone will at some point catch the variant, a fact potentially contributing to the fear critics express when governments, in New Brunswick or elsewhere, take steps towards “living with” COVID.
Politically speaking
Critics have called the idea of New Brunswick’s transition to living with COVID-19 a cover for political motivation.
Dr. Jennifer Russell has said in the past she doesn’t feel political pressure – but experts say the conversations held in COVID cabinet stay in COVID cabinet.
“If she’s in the cabinet committee, they’re sworn to secrecy,” says political scientist JP Lewis.
“We won’t know for years how decisions were made. Whether it’s in the premier’s office or the cabinet office.”
In conversation with Global News Wednesday, Jennifer Russell assures the moves are motivated by science – nothing more – having conversations with her counterparts across Canada several times a week.
She says recently, those conversations have included talks around making another big change to how COVID-19 is managed, one New Brunswickers have come to rely on since the province logged its first case in March 2020.
“We are trying to message the public that relying on case numbers on a daily basis is not really what’s going to be the most effective and efficient moving forward,” Jennifer Russell says.
She says her colleagues Canadawide agree, the numbers of hospitalizations now matter more.
So how much longer will the province report case counts daily?
“I assume probably not a whole lot longer,” she says.
She says she understands the panic these changes might bring to some residents – even saying they may feel abandoned.
“That is trying for some people,” she says.
“However we can get support to get through this, that’s what we need to do and try to maintain that hope.”
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