Canada’s public health doctors say the country is seeing the beginning of a fourth wave of COVID-19 but how bad that wave gets will depend heavily on vaccinations.
The Delta variant of the virus is more contagious and becoming dominant in Canada but McMaster University infectious disease specialist Dr. Zain Chagla says because vaccines are working so well against severe disease, this wave isn't likely to be anywhere near the crisis levels of the first three waves.
A recent report from the United States suggesting vaccinated people can spread COVID-19 as easily as unvaccinated people raised concerns about the effectiveness of vaccines but the report also notes most infections are still occurring in unvaccinated people.
The latest provincial data in Ontario shows 99.5 per cent of all COVID-19 ICU admissions from mid-June to mid-July were in unvaccinated or partially vaccinated people, and nearly 96 per cent of related deaths were in the same group.