No evidence of 'explosive activity' in variants: York Region's top doc

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While some GTA chief medical officers are full of doom and gloom when it comes to a potential surge of the virus, York Region’s top doc has an optimistic outlook about re-opening as he also attempts to calm fears about new variants.

“We do know that businesses seem to know what to do and certainly most people know what sort of measures to take,” said Dr. Karim Kurji, York Region’s chief medical officer of health, during an interview Monday with the Toronto Sun.

On the day York Region moved out of lockdown, Kurji urged residents to “be hopeful” as retail stores, bars, restaurants, gyms and more re-opened with reduced capacity.

These locations were never considered major sources of transmission in the first place, Kurji noted.

“I’m not expecting us to be going backwards,” Kurji said of a potential return to lockdown. “If things turn for the worst at any point, our aim is to have targeted interventions based on the data.”

York Region’s COVID-19 interactive dashboard reveals that the majority of virus cases have been chalked up to close contact.

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Kurji said that if cases do substantially rise again, then the data to date would support tightening the rules around social gatherings as opposed to shutting businesses down again.

Kurji is also not as fearful of the potential surge of new variants as some other Toronto-area medical officers have been.

“The wild card in all of this has been the variants, and we were probably hit by the variants early on in January,” explained Kurji. “Every day we look at that data, and we slice it in many different ways, and we are not seeing any evidence of explosive activity in the variants.”

Still Kurji recommended everyone continue to stay home as much as possible and practice physical distancing when they do go out.

Last week, Dr. Eileen DeVilla and Dr. Lawrence Loh — the medical officers for Toronto and Peel, respectively — called for their regions to be kept in tight lockdown for two more weeks largely due to fears over a rapid spread of new variants.

After Ontario Premier Doug Ford obliged their requests, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business slammed the province’s move as “downright insulting” and pointed out that GTA businesses have been among the most locked down in the entire world.

Since then, the number of new variants in the province reported by Public Health Ontario has been minimal. On Sunday, five new variant cases were reported.

On Monday, the number was -1, which reduced the total count to date by one.