Ottawa’s top doctor warns vaccination rate still too low to stop Delta variant spread

Ottawa's COVID-19 vaccination rate may be growing rapidly, having already reached 63 per cent of residents with one dose, but the city's Medical Officer of Health Dr. Vera Etches warns that it's still not high enough to stop the Delta variant from spreading.

“We're probably not yet at a time where enough of the population is vaccinated to stop the spread of COVID — well, I know we're not,” she says. “[The Delta variant] is probably coming, it's why we're really encouraging people to keep up with the public health measures to limit COVID transmission now.”

For weeks, measures have been taken in parts of southern Ontario, like Peel, Waterloo and Toronto, to limit the rising number of Delta variant cases, which Dr. Etches says is very similar to what happened at the beginning of the pandemic's third wave.

“We see the pattern in the province, it starts usually in the south, and then its spreads across Ontario, that's what happen with the Alpha variant,” Dr. Etches says. “In Ottawa, we don't have a lot of evidence right now that the Delta variant is circulating.”

So far, Ottawa Public Health (OPH) has reported five cases of the Delta variant (B1.617.2), but the health unit says each have been isolated cases. 

Ottawa's top doctor says they're monitoring every new COVID-19 case in the city for the Delta variant, but their priority is getting as many people fully vaccinated as possible before the variant starts to spread locally.

OPH says 663,160 residents over the age of 12 have had at least one shot of vaccine, which makes up 74 per cent of all residents over 18 and 63 per cent of Ottawa's total population. According to the health unit's vaccination dashboard, 126,034 residents have had two COVID-19 vaccine doses, which equals 15 per cent over the age of 18 and 12 per cent of the entire population.