Variants on the rise as Quebec reaches grim anniversary of COVID-19's arrival

It's now been more than a year since the very first case of COVID-19 was detected in Montreal on Feb. 27, 2020 — a tiny spark that quickly became a wildfire as March break travellers began returning home with fresh tans and a highly contagious virus.

Over the past year, more than 10,300 Quebec residents have died of the illness and the total number of people known to have been infected is nearing 300,000.

Now the province is fighting back with a full-scale vaccination campaign which has already seen hundreds of thousands of people inoculated, but the clock is ticking because dangerous variants of the disease are cropping up at an alarming rate.

The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 variants in Quebec jumped by more than 100 Sunday — the eve of a ramp-up in the province's mass vaccination plan.

The province has reported 137 confirmed cases involving variants, with most of them identified as the B117 mutation, first detected in the United Kingdom.

While most of the variant cases are in Montreal, the province's public health institute reported another 40 cases of the variant originally found in South Africa in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region.

A further 1,083 cases remain under investigation for a variant and are listed as "presumptive."

Health minister, premier optimistic

Regardless of the increase in the number of variants detected, Quebec Health Minister Christian Dubé said the situation is looking up.

"In the past week, the data has remained stable and this is encouraging," he wrote on Twitter Sunday, while warning the public to continue to collaborate with the province's effort to slow the spread of COVID-19.

The public vaccination campaign is set to go into full swing this week, but 432,255 doses have been administered already to Quebecers.

"It's been a long time since I felt so optimistic," Premier François Legault wrote in a Facebook post over the weekend.

"What gives me a lot of hope is the start of vaccinations of the general population," he said. "We start with people aged 85 and over and we will quickly vaccinate those 70 and over, then the entire adult population."

Legault said it's been a long battle against the virus, but vaccinating people is the turning point in winning the war against the pandemic.

The premier said he is particularly pleased to see so many at-risk residents already vaccinated. There have been almost no recent deaths or seriously ill residents in any of the province's long-term care homes, he said.

He said retirement homes should start seeing the same results soon. Roughly 200,000 health care workers have also received the vaccine and now the goal is to administer 175,000 doses per week throughout March.

Call for home delivery of vaccinations

While Legault is touting the success and optimism, he is still facing scrutiny for the way the vaccination campaign has been rolled out.

The Parti Québécois (PQ) has criticised the current strategy, saying the vaccine should be delivered to the most vulnerable seniors at home.

But Dubé and other public health officials have said the need to store the two main vaccines at low temperatures is exactly why doses cannot be delivered door-to-door.

The Legault government has called on community groups to ensure seniors make it to vaccine sites, but PQ health critic Joël Arseneau said more needs to be done.

"The community groups weren't involved in the planning or logistics," he said.

"They don't necessarily have the resources. The government didn't promise any help or any financial support, so it seems to us very improvised."

Community leaders say seniors need support

Community group leaders are also raising concerns about the vaccine rollout.

There is a "groundswell of opposition" from organizations serving seniors that are calling on the government to broaden the ways it inoculates the population, said David Cassidy, the past president of Seniors Action Quebec and current secretary treasurer of Gay and Grey Montreal.

Gerry Lafferty, the director of the New Hope Senior Citizen's Centre, said he's received several calls from clients of his organization — which helps thousands of seniors dealing with isolation in western Montreal — about the vaccination campaign's inaccessibility.

"The people I'm talking to want the vaccine and want it as soon as possible, but in a safe way," said Lafferty.

Ontario and British Columbia have recently announced programs to vaccinate vulnerable people in their homes.

Yet, not all seniors in Quebec are expected to find their own way to vaccination sites. Public health officials in Montreal have been quietly sending nurses to housing complexes in lower income areas of the city to vaccinate at-risk seniors in their homes.

Over the past two weeks, residents in 30 out of the city's 138 social housing complexes for seniors have had the opportunity to be vaccinated.