Public health institute says Quebec is in 6th wave, urges people to reduce contacts

Quebec's institute of public health (INSPQ) says the province is in its sixth wave of COVID-19 infections.

The institute estimates this most recent wave began in mid-March and it is quickly becoming a challenge in the health-care system as more and more workers get sick and are forced to stay home, according to Dr. Gaston De Serres, an epidemiologist at INSPQ.

He said a group at the INSPQ has been reviewing the data. 

"Clearly the indicators were showing we were already in the sixth wave," said De Serres, noting those indicators include points such as the positivity rate, number of sick health-care workers and number of hospitalizations.

"The fact that we are in a wave is something we were expecting."

Defining a wave is easier after it occurs, but it's harder at the beginning stage, he explained. Last week, it was clear the number of hospitalizations was increasing and nearly all regions were affected by COVID-19, he said.

"What we don't know, and what could be a variable, is how big this wave will be," De Serres said. 

"This depends largely upon the number of contacts the population will have in the next few weeks." 

Even if there are no official public health measures to reduce contacts, there clearly is a need for the population to minimize the number of contacts if the province hopes to get through this wave with a limited number of patients admitted to the hospital, he said.

De Serres said the Quebec government has made the choice to move away from mandates and is relying on citizens to be responsible for their own behaviour.

The wave was seen in Europe and was expected to affect the province, he said, but the increase in cases will be much smaller than what Quebec experienced at the end of December and the beginning of January.

The weeks of April should still be quite busy in terms of hospitalizations, De Serres added.

For the first time since the peak of the fifth wave in mid-January, the number of new hospitalizations has increased by 18 per cent since the previous week, according to a report by Quebec's provincial health institute (INESSS) published Wednesday and based on the data collected between March 19 and 25.

The hospitalization increase is observed in all age groups and in all regions, the report says. Although there is a slight increase in the number of people requiring a stay in intensive care, that number remains relatively low, the report says.