Canada's medical officers of health gave new short-term projections Tuesday for COVID-19 cases and deaths, while showing promising data of the pandemic's curve flattening.
But Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Theresa Tam and deputy chief Dr. Howard Njoo said projecting long-term is difficult on a number of factors, with the only assurance being our new normal will go on for months.
"I would love to be able to tell Canadians that life will be back to exactly where we were in December of last year, but no we're going to be living in, having different routines," she said.
The latest data shows the rate of cases doubling has slowed from every three days earlier on in the pandemic to 16 now, with outbreaks in seniors facilities responsible for nearly 80 per cent of all deaths.
The latest short-term projection is 3,227 to up to 3,883 deaths by May 5th, with a range of anywhere from 53,000 to 66,000 overall cases.
As of today, there are 2,852 deaths and almost 50,000 cases.
Projections by the Public Health Agency of Canada have been off before, for example, a presentation April 9th suggested there would be 500-700 deaths by April 16th.
There ended up being almost 1,200.
"If you're looking at deaths, it's kind of hard to look at predictions, because they really are the result in many ways of activities, the general population, what was happening at long-term care facilities, sort of like two or three weeks ago," Njoo said on the challenge.
Tam said the current tally of deaths is more inline with estimates.
"It is trending within the line of prediction," she said.
Previous forecasts for long-term have remain unchanged with varying percentages of infection, assuming strong epidemic controls remain the same:
-At 2.5 per cent of infection, 11,000 deaths over course of the pandemic
-At 5 per cent, 22,000 deaths over course of the pandemic.
However, weaker controls would yield infection rates of 25 and 50 per cent, leading up to 111,000 and 222,000 deaths respectively.
Tam says because of uncertainty around immunity, which studies are attempting to answer and other factors, it's critical for Canadians to continue physical distancing measures.
"You've got kind of plan for the worse, even if you're not going to actually get there, but really function so that you can achieve the best," she said, adding experts are constantly working on more accurate modelling data.
"But the bottom line that they're going to always say is that whatever we do, and if we ease off things too fast and we can't monitor it, we might see a resurgence and a second wave that is bigger than that initial one."
"This is absolutely still a marathon."
