Montreal’s Airport is Open, But They’ve Avoided the Third Wave
May 14, 2021 ctn_admin
Montreal has an international airport that’s open for flights from overseas, just like Toronto, Calgary and Montreal. But Montreal has mostly avoided the third wave of COVID-19 that has crashed over the other cities.
How is that possible?
An excellent story in the Globe and Mail points out that “the city came out of the second wave from a high of 1,274 cases on Jaunary 7 to fewer than 200 new daily cases this week. Over that time, cases spiked in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa and Quebec City, while Montreal remained in decline or on a plateau.”
But they’ve had flights coming in from all over the world. So, and here I’m speaking to Ontario Premier Doug Ford, how is that they’ve managed to mostly avoid the third wave?
The Globe says that “explanations are multiple and include revamped contact tracing, public compliance, high levels of immunity from both targeted vaccination and previous infections, a curfew along with other strict measures and luck.”
The paper says the city’s public health unit invested heavily in enhanced contact tracing that allowed it identify superspreaders. Their report also says the government of Quebec sent more vaccine doses to the city over the winter and that many of them went to homeless people and to vaccinate parents in hot-spot areas. Some parts of the city reached 50% vaccination levels while the rest of Montreal was around 30%, which the Globe story says slowed the virus spread from areas that triggered previous waves of COVID-19.
Ontario’s premier continually blames travel, but if you look at Montreal it’s clear that travel isn’t the issue, and that all the experts who called for intense vaccinations in hot-spot areas were right all along. Doug Ford only belatedly embraced hot-spot vaccinations, and is now beginning to walk away from the policy.
Here’s a link to the Globe story, which you’ll need a subscription to read.
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