The acting medical officer of health for Windsor-Essex believes all of us need to be part of the conversation on how we shift toward normalization when it comes to COVID-19.
Dr. Shanker Nesathurai says moving forward, we're going to have to make some difficult policy choices and decisions as a community and culture to adapt to COVID-19.
Nesathurai says he hopes we can normalize our experience with COVID-19, which is not the same as going back to the way things were before the pandemic.
"I think that moving forward we're going to have to make some difficult policy choices and decisions as a community and a culture on how we can learn to adapt to COVID, recognizing there are going to be times with more disease and some periods of time with less disease activity," he says.
Nesathurai says we have to consider that normalization means we may have to add additional beds and capacity to the healthcare system.
"It means we have to prioritize what programs and services we offer at the hospital and other healthcare facilities," he says. "It probably means we may have to continued to masking indefinitely, or at least in the short or medium term. It probably means we have to spend more of our resources on treatments."
Dr. Nesathurai adds that it probably means we may have to consider vaccination to get people up to date more frequently, just like the flu vaccine.
Premier Doug Ford announced Monday that the province will lift COVID-19 restrictions as of Feb. 17, increasing social gathering limits to 50 people indoors and 100 people outdoors, while capacity limits will be removed in places such as restaurants, bars, gyms and movie theatres.
The province also plans to lift its COVID-19 vaccine certificate system on March 1.