Sudbury immunologist offers tips to avoid a second wave of COVID-19

As the global COVID-19 pandemic continues, a Sudbury immunologist says caution has to be taken when reopening the economy.

Two months ago, the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic.

In Canada, non-essential businesses were shut down. Provinces are just starting to relax restrictions to allow some businesses to reopen.

Alain Simard is a professor of immunology at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine. He says overall, he's starting to hear positive news about COVID-19.

"We're starting to see fewer and fewer cases," he said. "So it's very evident that we're past the peak of the curve. We've flattened the curve."

Simard says that means current lockdown measures are working.

"Things weren't as bad as we feared originally probably because we acted quickly enough compared to other countries where they didn't and their situation is way worse than ours," he said.

However, despite that, Simard says he anticipates more people are infected than known.

"Right now in Ontario, we're only testing frontline workers or people who show symptoms," he said.

"But around the world, studies are showing that if you test anybody, it's 75 to 85 per cent of people who test positive for COVID are asymptomatic. They don't show symptoms."

Second wave?

Currently, all staff and residents in long-term care facilities in Ontario are being tested for COVID-19. There have been several cases where someone connected to a long-term care home tests positive even without showing symptoms.

"Because we're not testing on a more massive scale, we have no idea what the true number of infected people is," he said.

Overall, Simard says the response to COVID-19 in Ontario and Canada has been good. But he worries about things reopening too quickly and causing problems.

"What I'm a bit afraid of right now is because we're past this peak if we open up too much or if people become too complacent where they feel safe we may get a second wave of infection," he said.

"We don't know, it could be worse than the first one. It might not but everything that we would have done so far could be for nothing."