Volume 8 • 2021 • Issue 4

Your COVID-19 Questions Answered Dr. Aaron Burry, leader of the CDA COVID-19 Response Team and CDA’s Deputy CEO—Professional Affairs, answered questions in early July about dentistry in the context of the pandemic. Q Is the pandemic finally ending? Dr. Aaron Burry (AB): There are some very promising trends, including reduced case numbers and ICU admission in the last month, that certainly make it feel that way. With the COVID-19 pandemic, we are hopefully entering the transition phase. But it’s important to maintain a global perspective. Many parts of the world, including countries like Australia, still have very low vaccination rates and are seeing outbreaks. Israel and the UK are currently challenged with outbreaks in unvaccinated individuals that have resulted in a return to stricter measures despite significant vaccination rates among their populations. For Canadians, a high rate of vaccinations and rapidly declining hospitalizations and serious cases make it feel like COVID-19 is over, or at least that it will be ending soon. With these great strides, it’s easy for people to feel that once they’ve been double vaccinated, they are in the clear. I think things will continue to improve, but we’re not on the other side just yet. There are a couple of major hurdles in the way before declaring the pandemic over. First, it’s going to take time for vaccinations to reach more people around the world. Unvaccinated populations allow COVID-19 transmission to persist, which creates the opportunity for the virus to mutate and new variants to emerge. Until the entire world has access to vaccines, the pandemic will not be over. Second, vaccinations have been proven to be effective in reducing serious disease, but they are not foolproof. Some early vaccines that we are not using in Canada have proven to be ineffective in other countries, which has delayed the global effort to stop the spread of COVID. The last consideration for Canada, in particular, is that we don’t have a vaccine that has been approved yet for the under 12 population, which is about 12% of Canadians. As well, there remain some adults who are unvaccinated. Although children are affected less by COVID and tend to have mild illness, we are seeing problems associated with children passing the virus to adults who are not vaccinated. The new variants seem very adept at finding unvaccinated people, which will add challenges for daycares, schools and families as we continue to return to more activities with fewer restrictions. Q What do we need to plan for now? AB: The current wisdom suggests that COVID-19 will move from a pandemic to an endemic disease. Because we don’t know exactly what that will look like as a society, we’ll have to learn how to balance the risk of potential serious illness with the requirements of living our lives, as we have learned to with other endemic diseases, like influenza. The bigger concern is that the time between new infectious viruses has shrunk. In the past, a new virus might emerge once every 12 years. Since 2000, we’ve seen multiple outbreaks of respiratory viruses that cause significant illness requiring hospitalizations and deaths. As we transition out of the pandemic, it will be critical to look at what went well, what we can improve, and how we can be prepared for the next emerging illness. Actions like hand washing may help, but they are not the most important aspect in respiratory illness prevention. Dr. Aaron Burry 11 Issue 4 | 2021 | CDA at W ork