‘Here to stay’: Why this infectious disease expert remains wary of COVID-19

The latest data from Health Canada shows more than 3,200 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 the week of April 11.

When infectious disease expert Dr. Abdu Sharkawy looks at the rates of infection countrywide, he sees that people are getting sick, but not severely.

“Fortunately, the situation is relatively stable, which means to say that we’re not seeing huge surges of patients being admitted, specifically for COVID-19,” Dr. Sharkawy, internal medicine and assistant professor of medicine at the University of Toronto, told CTV’s Your Morning on Friday. “We’re certainly seeing the very, very rare situation of people admitted, needing ICU.”

The new variant of concern circulating in India, which is a combination of two previous Omicron variants, is worth “keeping an eye on,” Sharkawy said.

“There’s a new mutation in the spike protein that makes it potentially much more contagious and transmissible than earlier variants of Omicron,” he said. “And that’s been translated into a much higher surge of infections in India, in particular, it’s led to a surge in hospitalizations.”

To date, there have been no confirmed cases of the new variant in Canada. Nevertheless, Sharkawy says, “this virus is pretty much here, likely here to stay.”

On Jan. 30 the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 public health emergency was not over, even though the pandemic reached what experts call an “inflection point.”

But Sharkawy says, effectively, COVID-19 is in a hyper-endemic phase.

“Which means that it’s around, it’s not necessarily spreading very rapidly, but it’s in very high numbers,” he said. “So we need to make sure that we don’t take it lightly, it can still cause sufficient disease to make people sick enough that it’s going to diminish their quality of life.”

Sharkawy urged caution for the elderly and people who are immunocompromised and recommends keeping up-to-date with vaccines.

“Even a small percentage of people (getting sick with COVID-19) means a lot of people across the population, and that could end up meeting pressure on our healthcare system,” he said.

To watch the full interview click the video at the top of this article.