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Variable geometry distance | The duty

The post-winter confinement observed between four beige walls already seems distant. Death count dips in the nose in Quebec, suggesting that the virus has been spared holidays. The jackets fall, the mask too. The two meters distance melt a little more in the sun every day. One has to wonder if Quebeckers still take their precautions.

In his review of the 100 days of the pandemic, the national director of public health, the Dr Horacio Arruda, worried this week that the population would drop their guard. “I feel a relaxation that worries me a lot”, he lamented the day after a weekend of jubilation which proved that the fear of the virus of some Quebecers is not only soluble in alcohol, but also in white water of Lanaudière.

While waiting for a vaccine, preventive measures save time and remain the only possible prescription, hammer experts.

However, an unscientific trip made by The duty in several businesses in the metropolitan area in the middle of the week demonstrates that adherence to preventive measures is of variable geometry, just like the two meters apart. All places combined, less than a third of the people we met in closed environments wore face covers.

Since the deconfinement, we have to see if we went back to 8 or 10 contacts, or 12. Even with 8 close contacts, it is certain that we will have a second wave. In closed environments, this is where it happens. You have to be extra careful in a crowd.

Second wave in mid-July?

According to Benoît Mâsse, epidemiologist at the School of Public Health at the University of Montreal, the current decline in vigilance could open the door to the emergence of a second wave as early as mid-July. Now that isolation is a thing of the past, the number of “unprotected” contacts in the population is on the rise and will seal the end of our stormy relationship with SARS-CoV-2.

Before confinement, Quebecers had an average of 12.2 social contacts (family, school, work, transportation, leisure) within two meters per week, according to INSPQ figures. Only at work, there were on average 10 close contacts per day among employees. Containment reduced this number to four.

“Since the deconfinement, we have to see if we have gone back to 8 or 10 contacts, or 12. Even with 8 close contacts, it is certain that we will have a second wave,” believes this expert. In closed environments, this is where it happens. You have to be extra careful in a crowd. It means mask and hand washing, at the entry as at the exit. However, many shops do not offer the disinfectant until arrival. “

“We are starting to see positive cases again in people who have no idea where and how they got infected. It is clear that, just in shops and other closed places, there are contacts long enough to generate infections “, observes the Dre Caroline Quach-Thanh, pediatrician and microbiologist at CHU Sainte-Justine.

If 50% of people wore the mask in public, the R factor (the rate of reproduction of the virus) could be maintained unless there is contamination by the infected person. This measure is 50% more effective than if the mask is only worn by sick people, say researchers at the University of Cambridge.

But, in many minds, the wearing of the mask, or its rejection, has become over the weeks as much a political posture as an unnecessary inconvenience rather than a public health prescription.

In data | Our interactive content on COVID-19

The tip of the iceberg

According to the first data from the CONNECT study carried out by the Research Group in Mathematical Modeling and Health Economics Related to Infectious Diseases of the Research Center of the CHU de Québec-Université Laval, 19% of Quebecers would have worn a face cover in April (in the previous week), a rate that would have climbed to 41% in May. In Montreal, this would be the case for 46% of respondents, and the rate is… 28% elsewhere in Quebec, according to partial data * obtained by The duty. A portrait that contrasts with what we observed this week in the field.

“If everyone wore a mask, we could avoid a second wave”, thinks the Dre Quach-Thanh, who regrets that the face cover is not yet mandatory.

The meteoric resurgence of infections in the United States – 41,000 new cases in a single day this week – and in other countries where deconfinement began before Quebec should serve as an alarm, says Benoît Mâsse.

According to the latter, the carelessness of some people in the face of the mask is only the tip of the iceberg. “These people are probably also lax about hand washing and physical distance, and they don’t feel at risk or concerned,” he said. If nothing changes, a reconfiguration, partial or localized, is not to be excluded, according to him.

“People act like it’s a return to normal life. Several people are still confined. We are not equal in deconfinement, deplores the epidemiologist. The public must understand that the lives of many other people are still affected and still depend on our behavior. “

* Survey conducted among 546 Quebecers randomly selected from the general population between April 21 and May 20, 2020.

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