Record COVID cases in New Brunswick trigger no immediate action

In a late September news conference, New Brunswick health officials conceded the province had done a poor job anticipating and reacting to a summertime COVID-19 outbreak, but they expressed confidence they would still be able to get it stamped out.

"This province has had one of the most aggressive approaches to COVID anywhere in the world," infectious disease specialist Dr. Gordon Dow of Horizon Health told reporters.

"We'll bring this under control."

Eleven weeks later, the virus has never appeared less under control.

There have been 5,516 new cases in New Brunswick and 89 deaths since the September news event.

On Thursday, the province reported two new deaths and 174 people testing positive for the virus, the worst single-day case count of the pandemic.  

In the Fredericton region, or Zone 3, there were 94 new cases alone.  

Still, the aggressive response to COVID talked about in September and used regularly to battle past outbreaks in the province was not in evidence Thursday.

There were no official briefings for the public about the record numbers and no immediate measures proposed by health officials to respond to what has been happening in the Fredericton area.

That left Premier Blaine Higgs to try to relay what the experts were thinking.

"They aren't going to trigger a zone assessment right today, but I guess you see the next few days, and if it continues to rise that could change," Higgs said.

"Just to clarify 'they' is Public Health?" asked a reporter.

"Public Health, yes," Higgs confirmed.

Once a global leader in controlling the spread of COVID-19, New Brunswick has unequivocally lost that status.  

So far this fall, the province has had 15 times the cases it had last fall, even though nationally,  numbers are down over the same period.

New Brunswick's 50 worst daily case counts of the pandemic have all come in the last 90 days, including nine separate times when 100 cases or more were detected in a single day.

Last week, the rate of positive results from COVID tests in New Brunswick was six per cent, the highest in Canada outside of Manitoba.

For months, New Brunswick has been struggling to find a new way to deal with the pandemic, one that will allow life to return mostly to normal but in a way that doesn't unleash the virus to spread freely.

It has been an elusive combination to nail down.

"We have to find a way to live with COVID," Health Minister Dorothy Shephard explained last week in describing the "balance" government has been trying to reach.

It's a dramatic shift from the "elimination strategy" New Brunswick employed for most of the pandemic, where aggressive and sometimes severe public health restrictions were imposed quickly to smother the virus at the sign of an outbreak.

It was that strategy that had Dr. Dow convinced in September that New Brunswick would be able to crush the current spread.

"Because we use an elimination strategy, we've had seven distinct outbreaks in the province and what's interesting is we've shut every one of them down," he said.

The elimination strategy has been successful but disruptive.

Shortly after the September news conference, it was used in advance of Thanksgiving. Rising case counts in different parts of the province triggered public health "circuit breakers" that limited travel between health zones and socializing among different households.

The move generated intense criticism but it worked.  

Daily new case numbers in the province went from an average of 102 per day in early October to 40 within one month. Hospitalizations, which had climbed to 68 on Oct. 13, were down to just 13 by Nov. 6.

By mid-November, most circuit breaker restrictions were lifted and frustratingly case numbers almost immediately popped back up. With Thursday's record numbers, they are again at a seven-day average above 100 cases per day.

Hospitalizations have come up as well, peaking at 67 last week but have since dipped to 40.

Thirteen people have died from COVID over the last nine days, accounting for some of that change, but the province is hoping the numbers in hospital stay down without the need for further public health measures.

Despite sharply rising case numbers, significant numbers are in children, and the province believes their experience with COVID will be less severe.

And if hospitals do not see new admissions, it appears additional public health measures will not be coming.

It's a softening of New Brunswick's once hardline strategy to eliminate COVID in favour of keeping it at a level that doesn't flood the health-care system.

"It's like what are hospitals doing?" Higgs said. "That's the target. What's happening in hospitals? Are we going to be able to manage hospitals."