Epidemiologist speaks on what lifting restrictions means for the COVID-19 pandemic

Epidemiologist discusses living with COVID-19 Maritime provinces plan to drop restrictions however, one epidemiologist says this doesn't mean the pandemic is over. Laura Lyall reports.

With Maritime province's preparing to soon drop their COVID-19-related restrictions, an infectious disease epidemiologist with the University of Waterloo is cautioning that the lifting of measures does not mean the end of the pandemic.

“It doesn’t mean the virus isn’t there, the virus is still there,” says Dr. Zahid Butt, “but what public health authorities are trying to do is go back to as near normal life as possible.”

Dr. Butt says that when dropping measures, health officials in the different provinces should also think about ramping up testing, in particular PCR testing, in order to better understand how the virus is behaving.

“The hospitalizations is an indicator of community transmission, but it is not the only indicator – so you would still have to know how much transmission is going on in the community,” says Dr. Butt.

The removal of restrictions though is coming as a relief to the tourist industry after about two years of the pandemic.

“Of course we’re extremely excited with the tourism season coming up,” says Carol Alderdice, president of the Tourism Industry Association of New Brunswick, “operators are reporting that bookings are coming in and continue to come in – which is really great.”

But Alderdice also says that the labour shortage remains a major problem – in fact, she says 30 per cent of the tourism jobs in New Brunswick are unfilled.

“I’m very happy they announced the regulations being removed early because it will give our operators time to get the labour they need to provide the customer service that our visitors are actually expecting," says Alderdice.