The Decibel - What you need to know about COVID-19 this fall

Episode Date: September 16, 2025

COVID-19 is currently surging again. And it’s not even respiratory illness season yet. While much of the public would like to leave the pandemic behind, the virus isn’t going away and annual infections are becoming common. So, with testing, masking and vaccinations all down, what should be done to stop the spread?The Globe’s health reporter and columnist, André Picard joins the show. He’ll explain why we’re seeing COVID-19 infections numbers jump outside of respiratory season, the shifting politics affecting the way we address it, and what can be done to keep each other safe as protections fall away.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You've probably noticed that everyone is sick right now. Or maybe you're the one that's sick. And by now, we all know that sore throat and cough could be COVID. I know. I don't want to talk about COVID either. But today, we are going to talk about it. Because while headlines, protective measures, and public mandates have all basically gone away, a lot of us keep getting COVID. This summer, infections have jumped across Canada.

across Canada. And numbers are likely to increase as we head into the fall. So how should we be thinking about COVID right now? Andre Picard is the Globe's health reporter and columnist. He's our guest today, and he'll explain why we're seeing infections jump, how politics and social dynamics have impacted the way we face it, and what can be done to protect against the virus as COVID becomes another bug we pick up every year. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the accessible from the Globe and Mail. Hi, Andre. Thanks so much for being with me today. Hi.

So before we get into the numbers, I want to address the feelings around COVID more broadly. Because I'm sure you've noticed that there's an apprehension when it comes to talking about COVID. I'm definitely noticing it around me. As a person who thinks about health a lot, why do you think that is? Oh, I think we know historically it's human nature. We want to get over things. We want the pandemic to be over, get on with life. It was a very traumatic event.

It was one of the worst pandemics in history, 20 million dead. So we want to move on. So that's not surprising and it's not unusual. But I think what we have to talk about is what exactly can we not move on about? What should we still be concerned about? I'm glad you mentioned trauma because I think that's where people, their minds go to that, right? Like it was a dark time in people's lives. And I guess it's like we just don't want to be reminded of that dark period.

Exactly. It was really difficult on people. some people much more than others. There's very few people who weren't touched by the deaths. There were so many. There were the lockdowns that have left a real political scar in the country and around the world. So, yeah, there is a lot of trauma, and we have to acknowledge it. But of course, we can't ignore it, right?

It's important that we still know what's going on. And we'll get into that. But before we get into some of the numbers of what's happening right now, can you just remind us, how is COVID currently classified? Well, COVID is now essentially endemic, meaning it's here to stay. So it's like the flu. It's like colds. It's like many other infectious diseases. We have to learn to live with it because it's going to be around. And I'm curious, are the symptoms the same as when we first learned about COVID? Like, are we talking about sore throat, bad cough, loss of smell? Yeah, the symptoms are exactly the same. They're very similar to the flu. It's hard to distinguish between the two without a test. So, yeah, it's just another respiratory virus. practically for people in the real world.

Right. And of course we know that some people that contract COVID, they get symptoms that don't necessarily go away. It's something that we now called long COVID. What do we currently know about long COVID? Have we learned anything new? Well, it's still a relatively new disease, so we're still learning a lot about it. There's a lot of unknown. So we know about, you know, maybe two, three million people have had long-term symptoms. What we don't know is how many people recover. Like how many people are going to be permanently disabled? And there is a number, but it's not a huge number, but it is a concerning one. So this exists with every viral illness. There's some people who have symptoms that are very severe that last. It seems to be

more common with COVID, but maybe it's just because we're paying more attention. So I'd say there's many more questions and answers than there are about long COVID. You said two to three million. Are we talking about in Canada alone? Yeah, just in Canada. And that just means, that you had lingering symptoms maybe for months after you had COVID. A lot of people get better. Most people get better. But we just don't know that permanent number. Okay.

I guess health officials are probably looking at studying this longer to figure out what's going on with long COVID. Yeah, there are studies going on. Unfortunately, a lot of long COVID clinics have shut down. It gets entangled with other things like chronic fatigue syndrome. The symptoms are very similar. So again, there's going to be a lot of sorting out. do in the years to come.

Okay, yeah. Okay, let's get into what's going on today with COVID. So we've seen a jump in infections this summer. How many infections and outbreaks are we seeing across Canada right now? Well, we saw I just looked at the latest numbers. So there were about 1,600 cases in Canada last week. Not an insignificant number, not a huge number, but the message there is it's still around. We still have about 300 people in hospital with COVID.

a lot of outbreaks, 65 outbreaks that are current right now, almost all in long-term care homes, retirement homes, hospitals. This is an illness that infects older people, people with chronic conditions. So, again, it's very much like other respiratory illnesses, but it really is still spreading quite a lot in nursing homes. Yeah. You said 1,600 cases right now. Can you put that into perspective for me?

I think we heard a lot of numbers when we were in the depths of COVID. Like, where are we from that time to now? Like, what does 1,600 represent? Well, it's a very, very small number. You know, we have 40 million Canadians. When you look at the height of Omicron, when that really took off in 2021, probably 80% of the population was infected. So there's no comparison to the height of the pandemic.

But it's just a reminder, it's still here and it's going to stay. Okay, okay. And let's talk about how. we know that COVID is around because there are tests that are happening. What percentage of tests are coming back positive? Well, there's very little testing going on. Most of it's happening when people are quite sick. So there's a fairly high rate. About last week was 8.5% of tests came back positive, which is pretty significant when you look at other, again, other illnesses like the flu. People come in and not all of them have the illnesses they think. But the reality is

testing is now being done in hospitals, in nursing homes, in emergency rooms. It's not being done by everybody. You know, we all have, I think, COVID tests hiding in the back of our closet, but they're probably not very useful anymore. They're old and outdated. I actually just threw out, I think, two tests that were in my cabinet. I think they were expired in 2024, so I was like, I don't think I need these anymore. Yeah, I keep them with my masks. So let's talk about the 8.5% because that is the amount of tests that are coming back positive, people that are getting tested in hospitals, correct? Right.

Yeah. So what does that tell us about how COVID is circulating out in the population? It doesn't tell us a lot because it's being done in very specific settings. So if somebody tests positive is hospitalized from a nursing home, we'll probably test everyone around them. So that's why it's a fairly low number. But it's just a way of telling us that it's still there, it's still spreading, we have to pay it. attention to it. I think anybody who goes into an emergency room now with respiratory symptoms, they're going to get a COVID test, right? If you're in a nursing home, you're not feeling

well, you're going to get a COVID test. So this is where it's happening. It's happening in very specific locations. But it doesn't tell us a lot about the general spread because people aren't being tested in the general population. And we aren't collecting those numbers. We only collect them in very specific settings. Okay. And when it comes to the tests, does it mean that only people with severe symptoms are actually getting tested and counted? Yeah, I'd say people with serious symptoms, not necessarily severe, but, and people living in congregate settings is where we're still paying attention. Okay.

Let's talk about the numbers across Canada. Do we know, is every part of Canada reporting test numbers? Well, unfortunately, no. Different provinces and territories report different things to the federal government. Again, it speaks to a larger problem, which you've talked about on the show before, about how we collect and share data in Canada. It's kind of a mess. So, no, we don't have really universal numbers, but we have a good snapshot of what's happening. Okay. Which provinces and territories do we know are and aren't testing? Well, it actually, it depends on what data

point you're looking at. So almost every province reports deaths, not all of them. Fewer provinces report laboratory confirmed cases, so about eight jurisdictions and five don't. So it really varies, and there's not really any rhyme or reason to it. It's just it has to do with bureaucracy and federal provincial bickering and such things. Okay. So we know that tests are happening in hospitals. We don't really have a sense of what's going on in the outside of hospitals. So is there a sense that the actual level of infection is much higher?

Well, it's certainly higher than we know, but most people don't have severe symptoms, right? So it does. The numbers of people who are infected don't really matter anymore, I don't think, to be honest. Because if you have the mild symptoms, so what? You stay home, get better, and that's fine. So I think we don't have to pay a lot of attention to that, just like we don't count flu cases anymore. We don't figure out, you know, we don't try to count how many people have a common cold. These are things that are not important. The surveillance is important for, I think, the people more at risk. And also, I guess people, if they have mild symptoms, they can still spread it, right, out in public. Yeah, you can still be infectious.

And that's why I think people just have to be responsible. They have to, if you're sick, stay home from work. That's something that COVID really changed, right? We used to go to be tough and go to work when we were sick and cough all over people. I think COVID taught us a good lesson that we should be more careful about respiratory illnesses in general because it's those at-risk people that are really going to suffer. it's not everybody who's healthy. And Andre, we're not currently in respiratory season,

which is when we actually do see a spike and illnesses. Do you know why we're seeing higher numbers in the summer for COVID? Yeah, so traditionally we've always said, you know, there's no respiratory illness in the summer. But COVID has changed that. COVID's much more infectious than the flu, for example. The flu is a synonym for respiratory illness generally, but that's changing with COVID.

So what's been happening in the summer, is we, a lot of people get together, you know, we travel a lot, so we're on planes. A lot of people, because of rising temperatures, because of climate change, we spend a lot more time indoors. Yeah, it's really hot outside, so people are in AC, right? Or there's air conditioning, yeah. And that's really effective at spreading respiratory illnesses, having the air move around like that.

And the summer is sort of now becoming the new winter. So in winter, we rather inside, that's why there's lots of flu and COVID that spreads in the winter. And now that's happening in the summer. So this whole notion of respiratory season is changing, one of the many things changing with climate change. But we do know, you know, come October, November, it's going to be much colder. A lot more people are going to be inside. A lot more people are going to get sick as a result.

So there is that traditional season. We know where the epidemic curve is going. You know, it's easy to predict. And it's, again, a parallel between COVID and the flu. So what about the fall? Can we expect the numbers to jump? Oh, absolutely. The numbers are going to go up quite dramatically.

Now, we just don't know how much illness there will be. Again, most people will not be too sick. But the hospitalizations will go up. You know, in the last year, we've had 34,000 people hospitalized with COVID. And again, most of that happens in the winter season, in the traditional respiratory disease season. So it's something that still has an impact on the health system. We'll be right back.

Okay, so Andre, we talked about the public subversion to talking about COVID, but what about politicians and policymakers? How has their response shifted over the last five years? Oh, I think this is kryptonite. No politician wants to say the word COVID anymore because it's not going to end well, right? There's a small group of people who are very, very angry about COVID, and there's a large part of the population that wants to move on. So there's no point with a politician talking about COVID. You're only going to lose, unfortunately. Now, with public health, I think what's unfortunate is they've just stopped paying attention. They stopped promoting the vaccine, talking about the reality that is still with us. You know, you don't have to be hysterical.

It's not a huge deal. But I think there needs to be more acknowledgement from policymakers. And we've kind of forgotten that. Why do you think people have stopped, like especially when it comes a public health year? Like, why has that stopped? Well, I think they have the same or more trauma than everyone else. And, you know, public health really had a huge impact on them in COVID. A lot of it negative. Public health used to be treated, almost ignored. It was in the spotlight. It was treated very badly. We still have public health officials in this country who need RCMP bodyguards around the clock because of the lingering hatred. So these are very traumatic events. They they want to move on too. Also, they take their money and their guidance from politicians,

and if the politicians are saying move on, they have to move on because they don't have money for it either. That's such a good point. And a reminder that, yeah, it was the most traumatic for people that were working in the front lines there. Let's talk about vaccines. Can you remind us, what are the current recommendations? The current recommendations is that everyone at high risk should be vaccinated with the COVID vaccine annually. So that means people over the age of 65, anyone who's immunocompromise, who has a chronic illness, healthcare workers, of course, is very important. People living in poverty in crowded conditions, so low SES, people in society, especially

First Nations, where there's a lot of crowded housing. Pregnant women is really important. Those are the main ones. So it's now, we're not saying everybody get vaccinated. we're saying targeted vaccination. That's a, and again, very similar, almost identical recommendations for the flu. So practically, someone like me, who's a senior citizen, should go in the fall and get a flu vaccine and a COVID vaccine, which I'll do in the coming weeks.

And for those populations, are the vaccines still free? They are free everywhere except in Alberta. And Alberta has made this very controversial decision that you have to pay $100 for the vaccine. Now, because of the outrage, they back down. So some people can get it for free, notably health care workers. The availability, the new vaccine is just coming. So you can wait a couple of weeks and get the latest booster, or you can still get last years, which is very similar.

Have we seen the uptake around COVID vaccine change in Canada? Like how many people are still getting shots? Oh, a very small number, actually. About 8.5% of people got the most recent booster. as opposed to in the early days of COVID where it was almost universal. You know, 81% of Canadians have had at least one COVID shot, but very few have had the most recent booster. Okay. And I'm curious, are there places in Canada where we're seeing more or less uptake?

I mean, you talked about Alberta, how they wanted to make a shot $100. So, yeah, are we seeing parts of Canada that are more vaccinated and less vaccinated? Yeah, there's little pockets of Canada that are vaccine, much more vaccine, hesitant for all kinds of vaccines, but the differences are mostly by age. So it's a pretty high uptake in older people, those most at risk, and much less so with middle-aged younger people and children. Okay. I want to talk about the U.S. for a minute because the U.S. has really been leading the charge in terms of rollbacks to COVID protections. Can you tell us what's going on there? Well, there's just a people in power who are essentially anti-vaccine.

So we know about RFK Jr. He has a long history of being anti-vaccine. And he's bringing... Yeah, the health secretary. Yeah, the health secretary of the U.S. now. He is essentially bringing this dislike for vaccine to policy. So he's trying to pretty well stop vaccination. You know, he'll say, no, he's not anti-vaccine.

But the gist of the policies is to make it much more difficult to get vaccines. and especially COVID vaccines. The COVID vaccine is even more politicized in the U.S. than it is in Canada. It's a real hot-button issue. So it's really easy for him to say this vaccine's dangerous. Nobody should take it. We're going to make it difficult to get. That's the reality in the U.S., unfortunately.

Is there a concern that what's going on in the U.S. could affect public health policy or even attitudes around this in Canada? Well, I think there's no question that when you hear this constantly in the media, We get a lot of American media. It's going to have an impact. People are going to have it. The idea is to make people doubt the benefits of vaccination, to doubt that actually COVID is actually a problem.

So, yeah, it's having an impact all over the world. You've mentioned a couple of times here about the flu, right? And kind of comparing COVID and the flu. I'm wondering, like, let's spell it out. Like, should we be treating COVID like the flu in this case? Well, I'd answer that in two ways. One, yes, we should be treating it like the flu. But two, we don't.

take the flu seriously enough either. You know, the flu kills 3,500 Canadians a year. It's not insignificant. It's about a very similar number to COVID now. So these are serious illnesses that vary, that harm particular population. So we should be paying attention to them. Again, we shouldn't be panicking. We shouldn't be freaking out. They're here to stay. But we have to try and mitigate the harm that happens, especially to elders from these infectious diseases. The other thing I'd say between COVID and the flu that we have to pay attention to is actually the flu is much more deadly for children. We forget that. A lot of children die of the flu every year, and that's tragic because it's entirely preventable. And almost no children die of COVID,

which is a good thing. But again, these are illnesses that can affect young, particularly very young children whose immune systems aren't fully developed yet. And pregnant women, especially, are very vulnerable to these respiratory illnesses. So we have to pay, I think, a lot more heed to these at-risk populations. It's a good reminder to be taking both COVID and the flu more seriously then. Absolutely. I think that's the overall story here that COVID taught us is that respiratory diseases are very deadly. They're very wily. And there's going to be more of them to come. I think one of the big lessons of COVID was we don't take the quality of our air seriously. And we should start doing that. And if we do it, it's going to protect us from the next pandemic, too,

which will almost certainly be a respiratory illness. Tell me more about that. Like, how should we be taking more care of our air right now? Well, so I talked to someone when I did this recent story about summer COVID, who talked about, you know, made this parallel between water. We have great water in Canada, right? All our water is filtered, comes through our tap, it's safe. That's a relatively new thing. We didn't used to have filtered water. There's a lot of waterborne illness. We have to start paying as much attention to our air as we do to our water. So there should be a lot more filtering, especially in public spaces. You know, I think that we should have much better filtering in schools, in community centers, especially in nursing homes, retirement homes, hospitals. We have a

lot of pretty bad air that circulates in these places. And if we bring in filters, things like hepa filters, I think should be the norm going forward. We're also going to protect ourselves from other new threats like wildfire smoke, all the particulates, pollution, microplastics. There's a lot of stuff in our air that we're starting to pay attention to the way we started to pay attention to our water 50 or 100 years ago. Andre, I want to end on a kind of a big thought here. When we were in the depths of COVID, there was a sense that we would kind of learn from the moment to keep some of the policies or the etiquette that COVID brought.

You know, I'm thinking about staying at home when you're sick or math. asking in public on the policymaker front as well, like keeping us the public informed, especially around vaccines and other health measures. But it does feel like there's complacency around how we treat COVID now. So how do we combat this and why do we still need to care? Yeah, I think unfortunately, again, I'm a big fan of medical history. I think it's very informative about what's happening now. And I think history tells us that we don't really learn lessons very well.

You know, we had excellent reports about the first SARS back in. in 2004, that could have prevented a lot of the carnage that happened during COVID, right? And we didn't learn. I think we've learned a little bit this time. So that's the best we can hope for. Let's learn a little bit about the importance of mitigating airborne illness, the importance of sharing data. We obviously haven't learned that one fully.

The importance of staying home, you know, that it pays off to be kind to our neighbors. We are very, very kind early in COVID. but now we've gone to the other extreme. But hopefully this stuff, you know, I'm a big believer in the pendulum swinging back and forth, and I think these things will come back to the middle. We'll sort of become blissfully ignorant until the next pandemic comes along.

Let's hope that doesn't happen. But Andre, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you. Always pleasure. That was Andre Picard, the Globe's health reporter and columnist. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Our producers are Madeline White, Michal Stein, and Ali Graham. David Crosby edits the show.

Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you soon.