As COVID-19 cases soar and regions lock down, Dr. Tam has a blunt message about holiday planning

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A woman wearing a face mask is seen through Christmas lights in downtown Vancouver on Sunday. Canada’s chief public health officer is recommending against holiday gatherings beyond one’s own household. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press)

 

(Stephanie Hogan & Andrew Chang/ CBC News) — On a day that saw Ontario and Manitoba announce record-high numbers of new COVID-19 cases, two provinces pull out of the much-lauded Atlantic bubble and close their borders, and millions of people in different regions of the country plunge back into lockdowns reminiscent of last spring, Canada’s chief public health officer said the tighter rules are a necessary evil right now.

“The longer you wait to increase the measures, the longer it would take to come out of the restrictions,” Dr. Theresa Tam told The National’s Andrew Chang.

She said that over the past several months, provincial and territorial medical officers of health tried hard to achieve a balance where they could keep up with COVID-19 testing and contact tracing while keeping society open.

“It’s just something that people have never tried in the history of the last hundred years,” Tam said. “They were trying really hard to minimize impact on the economic side, on schools, on work…. It’s just not an easy thing to do.”

You can watch the full interview with Dr. Theresa Tam streaming on cbcnews.ca and on CBC Gem. (…)

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