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Fighting COVID-19 in Ontario: The Way Forward

Version 1.0 | https://doi.org/10.47326/ocsat.2021.02.23.1.0

83,774 views | 4,558 downloads | Published: April 20, 2021

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One year into the COVID-19 pandemic, Ontario is now facing the most challenging health crisis of our time. Our case counts are at an all-time high. Our hospitals are buckling. Younger people are getting sicker. The disease is ripping through whole families. The variants of concern that now dominate COVID-19 in Ontario are, in many ways, a new pandemic. And Ontario needs stronger measures to control the pandemic.

If we want to bring cases under control, protect our health system and reopen as quickly as possible, this is the way forward.

Our Principles

Since its formation in July 2020, the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table has operated according to three principles:

1. We are guided by the most current scientific evidence.

2. We are transparent. All of our Science Briefs and presentations are publicly posted so that everyone has access to our advice and can use it.

3. We are independent. While we generally advise the provincial government of what we will say publicly, no government body or office vets or controls our scientific content or communications in any way.

What Will Work

More than one year into the COVID-19 pandemic, we know the following six things will reduce transmission, protect our health care system, and allow us to re-open safely as soon as possible:

What Won’t Work

There is no trade-off between economic, social and health priorities in the midst of a pandemic that is out of control. The fastest way back to work – and to all the other things that make life in Ontario great – is to get this disease under control as quickly as we can, together.

Document Information & Citation

Citation: Fighting COVID-19 in Ontario: The Way Forward. Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table. 2021;1(23). https://doi.org/10.47326/ocsat.2021.02.23.1.0

Author Affiliations: The affiliations of the members of the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table can be found at https://covid19-sciencetable.ca/.

Anne Hayes, Michael Hillmer, and David McKeown of the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table, and Brian Lewis, Kamil Malikov, and Bill Praamsma of the Modelling Consensus Table have recused themselves from this statement.

Copyright: 2021 Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table. This is an open access document distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited.