Infectious disease doctor says ditching masks will depend on risk tolerance

According to the Saskatchewan government, July 11 is the day when masks won’t be required indoors anymore and all remaining COVID-related public health measures will be lifted.

But with the more transmissible Delta variant numbers increasing nearly every day, some are wondering if it’s too soon to lift restrictions and if people should take precautions even if they’ve been fully vaccinated.

Infectious disease physician Dr. Alex Wong says vaccines are doing a great job so far.

“The vaccines have been incredible,” he said. “There’s great evidence from around the world showing how incredibly good they are …

“And the likelihood that we’re going to see a significant surge that is going to threaten our hospital capacity and our ICU capacity the way that things kind of happened in March and April here in Regina, I’m pretty optimistic that that’s never going to happen again.”

However, Wong cautions people that the pandemic isn’t over yet, and we’ll likely continue to see serious cases for those who choose not to get their vaccines, and within the younger groups that can’t be vaccinated at this point.

“We’re going to be looking at hospitalizations and deaths as sort of the markers for whether we sort of need to do anything at a public health level in terms of additional measures and interventions,” he explained.

For those who are fully vaccinated it will be up to them to decide whether they want to put on a mask and in what kinds of situations. He says it all comes down to risk tolerance.

The risk will be minimal for people who are fully vaccinated and for people in outdoor spaces that aren’t very crowded. Once the variables change, the risk can increase — especially indoors.

“Once you have people who aren’t vaccinated at all and then you also look at the crowding situation and how tightly people are packed together, all those different factors and variables influence risk in terms of your likelihood that you might get infected,” he explained.

It’s a situation where people will make what they feel are the best decisions for their family unit or for themselves. Wong added if someone is in a situation where they’re indoors for a long period of time with a lot of people, and it’s not known how many have their vaccinations, it might be a good idea to put that mask back on, even though we’ve been doing it for the last year.

“It’s a cheap, simple, effective way to protect yourself from getting respiratory viruses and others from getting respiratory viruses,” he said.