Thread by @COVIDNS

Some concerning policy shifts have taken place in Canada that are important to talk about.

It’s rather shocking, considering even Florida still offers COVID-19 testing, but Alberta announced today that by Aug. 31, they will no longer be testing for COVID-19 in the community.

It’s understandable that we all want to move forward, but to stop testing for it when a highly infectious variant is spreading rapidly through a still unvaccinated ~30% population along with much of the world remaining unvaccinated, is irresponsible.

Variants exist due to spreading through humans. As a virus spreads and replicates, errors in the genetic replication can cause new mutations of the virus, which could cause variants that are less effective or more effective at spreading/causing severe disease.

The theory of evolution applies to a virus as it mutates - the less effective variants die out, whereas the more effective variants become dominant, continue to mutate, and become better versions of themselves.

The danger here is a variant could emerge that is vaccine resistant.

Nova Scotia is making incredible progress in fully vaccinating the population, with an increase of 2.3% just yesterday.

Nova Scotia now ranks 4th in the country in terms of proportion of the total population fully vaccinated, behind Ontario, NWT, and Yukon, respectively.

Vaccines are a very important tool in helping us return to a normal life, but they need to be supplemented with masking indoors, physical distancing, and hand washing until we reach an acceptable level of herd immunity, and also hopefully get a vaccine approved for all ages.