Your weekly COVID-19 update

Every Tuesday, the Maclean's daily newsletter will catch you up on what you need to know about Canada's fight against the coronavirus. This week, Patricia Treble focuses on one story worth watching, and you can get a sneak peek here. You'll also get the same mix of Maclean's stories you expect every day if you scroll down below.

First, the good news: After six weeks of rapid growth in cases, the forward momentum is finally slowing. Now, the not-so-good news: While the increase is slowing, it’s still climbing, and at near record rates. And with more and more cases of the highly contagious B.1.1.7 variant being detected in Canada, experts fear that the momentum could again shift upward, only this time those new cases will be piled onto a base that is already high enough to stress the entire health care system.

On Monday, Bonnie Henry, British Columbia’s provincial health officer warned against complacency: “In the last couple of weeks, we have plateaued at about 500 new cases of COVID-19 a day. And, while the number of long-term care outbreaks has slowed, we continue to see new outbreaks in hospitals and in the community. This may seem stable to some, but it is a precarious situation for all of us. This shows us that while we are slowing the spread in long-term care, the risks remain high because the virus continues to circulate in our communities. We are at the threshold of where we were in November when cases started rapidly escalating, and we need to put a stop to this before more people become severely ill and our health-care system faces even more strain.”

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