'This pandemic will end': What Strang wants Nova Scotians to know about COVID-19 this new year

Although Nova Scotia has been reporting record-breaking COVID-19 case numbers over the holidays, the province's chief medical officer of health is optimistic the pandemic is on its way out.

The province reported 1,020 new cases Monday, just shy of the record 1,184 cases reported the day before.

Despite the high case numbers, Dr. Robert Strang says the relatively low number of hospitalizations is a sign that the more transmissible Omicron variant could have Nova Scotians living with the virus by spring.

As of Monday, there were 36 people in hospital, including four in intensive care. 

Portia Clark, host of CBC Radio's Information Morning Nova Scotia, spoke to Strang on Monday about what Nova Scotians can expect from COVID-19 in the new year and how schools will operate as students go back to class.

Listen to the full interview here:

This discussion has been edited for length, brevity and clarity.

Do all the cases reported [Sunday] and from Jan. 1 include take-home tests that were emailed in, or are these PCR test results only?

These are the PCR tests results through the lab. We're still working on and streamlining the process for people to report their rapid test results.

How might that streamlining look, once you do figure that out in terms of reporting those and having those added to the totals?

Some people have raised some concerns around privacy and so we're looking at how we make something [for that]. Anything that's reporting needs to be done very efficiently, both for people reporting and also people who are going to be putting all that data together so it's usable. 

We're looking at that, but I think we're at a point … we actually don't need to know about every single case. There's no way we ever will. We have enough testing going on from a surveillance perspective to know where we are in the Omicron wave, whether we're going up, stabilizing or coming down. 

What's more important is really keeping track of the indicators of severe disease of people that are getting into hospital or ICU and tracking that very carefully.

What do you think it will take to stabilize the rate of infection? 

What we saw this weekend is to me, looking at the dates of onsets, it reflects people getting together even within the safe [gathering] numbers.

Omicron is so infectious that even small numbers of people getting together is an opportunity for the virus to spread. So I think this is a short-term peak. We may have a similar kind of spike a week from now related to New Year's. 

January is going to be up and down with high case numbers, but I think we have things in place that we can slow down the spread. That's our goal — not to prevent spread, but slow down the spread to limit the number of people at any one time needing hospitalization.

This pandemic will end and I think Omicron is likely to be the way out of this. As we get through February and March, things will settle down, and myself and lots of my Public Health colleagues really feel that by the time we get to spring, we will be really robustly able to move into the endemic or "living with COVID" phase.

You mentioned a week from now, we might see another peak because of New Year's. Might that trigger a switch to online learning or delaying school opening on Jan. 10?

No. We're watching carefully, but … it's very important that if you look at what's best for the overall health and well-being of kids, that they be in school wherever possible. There's lots of substantive harms that happen, as we've learned with kids not being in school.

By and large, COVID is a relatively mild illness, especially in young people, so we need to balance those out and so we feel like where we're at today, we're moving forward with it, starting in-person learning a week from today.

Is lunchtime snacking — taking down those masks in school — is that a big area of concern once the kids are back? 

So what we're finalizing this week is kind of, like, the return to school, which will be much more like it was last spring in terms of keeping classroom cohorts as much as possible, limiting movement around the school, having a small groups for lunch times in classrooms or in high schools, limiting the numbers that could be in the lunchroom at any one time. 

Masking remains critically important, not just in schools [but] everywhere. A minimum of a three-layered or three-ply cloth mask, no longer the one or two layered masks. Those need to be worn and worn as much as possible and worn … [properly].

Some parents are questioning the wait time between the first and second doses for children, given that it means the kids will be back in school without being fully vaccinated. Can you explain that gap for them?

The first dose does provide a good level of protection, perhaps not so much against Omicron, but one thing we've learned for certain is that a longer interval between vaccinations produces a better, longer-lasting immunity, so maintaining that NACI-recommended interval between doses is important. 

We need to think about vaccines as longer-term protection and not just for today. Vaccines are important, but we need to use other layers of protection, especially right now.

So what's your advice in particular for parents of kids under five who can't get vaccinated when there's so much COVID floating around? 

Like everybody else, we need to … do everything in terms of keeping them in small groups, masking where possible. I recognize that can be challenging for younger kids. 

And right now, one of the most important things, if anybody has cold or flu-like symptoms, is just staying home. We're still doing rapid tests and we're looking at making another distribution of the rapid test kits both through to schools and daycares, and we're just looking at that as our capacity allows. 

And so if a child tests positive after Jan. 10 when school is in, how do parents get contact information for other kids in the class to let them know that they might need to get tested?

I think the most important thing is we're going to be focusing a lot more on the basic message, "If you have cold or flu like symptoms, stay home and then arrange to do a test," whether you're in the category for a PCR test or especially in schools, most people rapid test.

We will not use case and contact management and isolating all contacts as it's impossible for that to have an impact given the extent of spread. So we're going to be working on what's an appropriate level of notification and finalizing that this week through the education system, but again, the key message is, if you're sick, stay home.