Learning to live with COVID: why some experts say it's time to 'manage' the virus

The lightning-fast spread of the Omicron variant is prompting some of the country's top public health officials to rethink their approach to COVID-19 — and to acknowledge that Canadians should get used to living with the virus.

One of them is Dr. Robert Strang, Nova Scotia's chief medical officer of health.

"At some point in time, we are going to have to say we have to move away and accept that the virus that causes COVID is going to be around with us," Strang said in an interview airing Saturday on CBC's The House.

Strang said the goal should be to "manage" COVID-19 "based on having good levels of immunity from both vaccination and infection ... [so] that we no longer have to have these wide restrictive measures and have this huge focus of trying to identify as many cases as possible."

That's a significant departure from the approach most governments have taken since COVID-19 emerged in Canada nearly two years ago.

The proven potency of vaccines is one reason we're having this conversation now — but Strang also said Omicron is so pervasive that everyone needs to recognize that it may no longer be possible to avoid.

"No matter what our age is, if we're out and about and in our communities, there's a strong likelihood that we're going to be exposed and may well get COVID. We have to accept that reality," he said.

Strang isn't alone. His counterpart in Newfoundland and Labrador, Dr. Janice Fitzgerald, offered the same view at a news conference earlier this week.

"The reality of this virus is that it is so infectious most people will acquire it," she said. "But our health care system can't withstand the pressure of everyone acquiring it at the same time."

So the focus now appears to be on managing the spread, rather than containing it.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford this week reintroduced health restrictions, moved classes back online for two weeks and paused non-emergency surgeries. The measures, he said, are intended to slow down Omicron as much as possible.

"I say slow the spread because it can't be stopped," he said. "Looking at other countries, other provinces, it's too contagious to stop completely."

The idea of herd immunity was floated in the past by politicians but abandoned as an option as case counts, hospitalizations and deaths mounted around the world.

Strang doesn't like the term herd immunity. But he said it's clear that with the emergence of Omicron, a high level of what he calls "population immunity" — infections combined with widespread vaccination — could allow people to carry on with their lives.