Ontario probably won't be ready to end stay-at-home order on May 20, experts say

Ontario is scheduled to break out of its stay-at-home order on May 20,but health experts say the province likely won't be ready by then and may need to extend the orderfor a bit longer, especially if we want to avoid another pandemic wave.

The Ontario government strengthened pandemic rules three times in April, allas COVID-19casesand hospitalizations surged.

Those sweeping changes startedless than two months after eastern Ontario came out of the wintershutdown.

"When we saw cases dipping in February, people said 'Oh, these are the dying embers of the second wave,' but in fact they were also at the same time the sparks of a third wave," saidDr. Gerald Evans, an infectious disease specialist at Queen's University and Kingston Health Sciences Centre.

Thatis why it's important to be cautious when loosening restrictions, he said.

"This is really a lesson that we need to have learned ... from the previous [waves.]"

Instead of listing an arbitrary date when the stay-at-home order should end, Evans suggestedthe end of lockdowns should bepinned to when cases drop below a certain rate. More specifically, he said, when new COVID-19 cases get below a rate of 20 per 100,000 people per week.

To put that in perspective, Ontario was at 166.6 per 100,000 on May 1 andOttawa was at 102.9per 100,000 as of Wednesday. Two weeks ago Ottawa'snumber was near 180. It hasn't been close to20 since late November.

Could parts of eastern Ontariodrop that low by May 20? Probably not, according to Evans, but he said it'spossible that some regions with rates of around 30 like Leeds, Grenville and Lanarkcounties, located between Kingston and Ottawa could reach thattargetby the end of the month.

The Eastern Ontario Health Unit (EOHU) is currently in the low 50sand the Kingston area is in the mid-40s.

EOHU Medical Officer of Health Dr. Paul Roumeliotis said earlier this week he would at least like to see the order extended through the May 24 long weekend to discouragespread duringholiday gatherings.

COVID levels in wastewater still high

One of Ottawa's telling coronavirussigns is in the city's poop.

The viral load in the city's wastewater has decreased, but is still two to three times higher than it was last summerand continues to hover around the January peak.

When the viral load increases, it goes up quite sharply, according to Tyson Graber, a scientist on Ottawa's coronavirus wastewater monitoring program.

"But when we come down," he said, "it's a very slow trailing off."

This time around, Grabersaidthe rate is "stubborn" and keeps plateauing. Part of that may be due to themore contagious variants of concern,which madeupmore than three-quarters of the coronavirus that was found in wastewater as of May 1.

Besides the variants, another factor during this third wave of the pandemic is widespread vaccinations. That will makea big difference if measures stay in place, according to Evans.

If people can hold out a bit longer, he said the start of summer could look much closer to normal.

"The longer the lockdown is in place and stay-at-home orders are in place, then the bigger bang for our buck we're going to get from vaccination."