Not so Fast! The sky's are not so friendly! NATHAN DENETTE/THE CANADIAN PRESS
More than 2,000 people returning to Canada since the federal government brought in mandatory hotel quarantines have tested positive for COVID-19 and more than a quarter of them were infected with a variant of concern.
Data supplied to The Canadian Press by the Public Health Agency of Canada show that between Feb. 22 and April 22, 557 international air travellers tested positive for a variant of concern. Most of them, 518 cases, are the B.1.1.7 variant first identified in the United Kingdom, which is the dominant variant in Canada.
Another 27 passengers tested positive for the B.1.351 variant first identified in South Africa, and 12 tested positive for the P.1 variant identified in Brazil.
The viruses mutations become “variants of concern” when they are confirmed to spread more easily, cause more severe illness or be resistant to known treatments or vaccines.
Data is not available to show if those passengers are believed to have infected anyone after arriving, but at some point, all of those variants arrived in Canada via travellers, and then spread. There are now almost 95,000 confirmed cases of B.1.1.7, as well 578 cases of B.1.351 and more than 2,000 of P.1.
Those numbers have opposition parties and provincial governments begging Ottawa to take even more steps to keep travellers from bringing COVID-19 into Canada with them.
“I’m pleading with the federal government to stop all non-essential travel to Canada before new variants overwhelm our ICUs completely,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford wrote on Twitter April 24.