Volume 9 • 2022 • Issue 2

Dr. Aaron Burry, interim CEO of CDA and leader of the COVID-19 Response Team, answered questions in March about dentistry in the context of the pandemic. Q Can you comment on where we are now in the pandemic? Dr. Aaron Burry (AB): After averaging about 40,000 daily new COVID cases in Canada in early January, case numbers fell to about 6,000 per day by the end of February. So it seems like we’re at a plateau now and cases continue to decline. At this point, most of us know someone—a friend or family member—who has had COVID or maybe we’ve even had it ourselves. In Canada, we are very lucky that our high vaccination rates have protected so many of us from the potential of severe illness. With the earlier variants of COVID, global death rates remained consistent at about 2% of people infected. The impact of vaccination reduced that considerably, especially in Canada, and with Omicron causing less severe illness in general, the death rate has continued to decline nearer to 1%. Thankfully, a highly transmissible but less severe variant combined with high vaccination rates has spared lives and reduced the strain on the health care system. There is some emerging evidence that suggests that people with certain gene combinations have a far greater risk of critical illness caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection irrespective of age. Even young and healthy people have a chance that they’ll become very sick if they are unfortunate enough to have one of these gene combinations. In the US, there have been reports of unvaccinated, completely healthy people between the ages of 18 and 40 who have had fatal outcomes from COVID and the reason likely lies in their specific genetics. But as we head into the spring season in North America and our lives are spent more outdoors, I feel cautiously optimistic that we will see significantly lower levels of illness. Q How has this decrease in COVID cases affected Canada? AB: A big challenge is that the public’s willingness to participate in public health measures declines as the perception of risk or danger declines. Interest in vaccination and masking will wane as COVID cases continue to fall. We’ve already seen that people who are eligible to get boosters are less likely to get them than they were earlier in the pandemic. This is unfortunate, because boosted immune systems are better prepared to deal with whatever might come up next autumn. In the coming months, many of the public health measures that were required by provincial governments will come to end. Public health recommendations will still be in place but these won’t be requirements. The onus of responsibility for managing risk will move from the government to individuals. Dr. Aaron Burry Your COVID-19 Questions Answered 9 Issue 2 | 2022 | CDA atWork