Turn Emily Viegas’ tragic death into action against COVID-19

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/04/2021 (1298 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Bulletins from the COVID front in the province of Ontario, one day in late April 2021:

• Politicians rush to lament the death of a 13-year-old girl, Emily Victoria Viegas, one of the youngest people in Canada to succumb to COVID. Reports say she lived with her family in a two-bedroom apartment in Brampton, in one of the “hotspot” areas hardest hit by the pandemic. Her father, Carlos, works in a warehouse — one of those “essential workers” who can’t shelter at home.

• On the same day, the Progressive Conservative majority in Ontario’s legislature votes down a Liberal-sponsored plan to bring in paid sick leave for essential workers. Liberals say it’s the 21st time the PCs have voted against paid leave. Meanwhile, the government says it’s still working on such a plan. Stay tuned.

• Ontario asks for help from Ottawa to fight the third wave. The federal government will send military and Red Cross personnel into Ontario hospitals, and fly in medical professionals from other provinces. A week ago, Ontario’s government was insisting it didn’t need any outside help, just more vaccines.

• Ontario’s own science advisers, backed by mayors across the GTA and Hamilton region, are begging the province to pour vaccines into hot spot areas to douse the COVID fire and save lives. Half of available doses, they say, should go immediately to those areas — ones just like the Brampton neighbourhood where Emily Viegas lived and died. The government, says the deputy premier, is considering that.

That’s a lot of dots, but connecting them isn’t hard.

They paint a picture of a government floundering in the face of the pandemic. A government that talks about doing the right thing, but keeps finding reasons not to act. A government that has been told, over and over, what needs to be done, but simply won’t do it.

For weeks, independent experts and the government’s own science table have been telling it: focus on the hot spots. Dole out vaccines, in whatever numbers are available, according to need, not just population.

And yet even now the vaccines aren’t getting to Brampton and other hard-hit areas in the numbers that are needed. Ministers keep announcing that should be done, but health professionals on the ground keep saying those words aren’t being turned into action. Those areas have been largely abandoned at the moment of their most urgent need.

On paid sick leave, the Ford government’s failure to act is frankly scandalous. It’s now a week since the government finally conceded that the federal government’s emergency sick-leave program is inadequate, and five days since the premier officially promised to bring in his own plan, one he boasted would be “the best program anywhere in North America, bar none.” Essential workers are still waiting, as the pandemic continues to take its toll.

Perhaps the death of a young teenager will galvanize public opinion and force the Ford government finally to do what it should have done weeks ago — pour resources into the hardest hit areas and support workers to stay home if they must and get vaccinated as soon as possible.

It’s not possible, of course, to say definitively that Emily Viegas’s death would have been prevented by such measures. The third wave of COVID variants is, sadly, proving more dangerous to younger people.

But who can claim to be surprised to learn that she lived in a part of Brampton that is at the epicentre of the pandemic, a neighbourhood where COVID positivity rates are sky high, and that her father was out each day doing the kind of job that can’t be done safely at home?

All the conditions were there for tragedy, and the province wasn’t doing nearly enough to head it off.

It’s too late for Emily Viegas and her family, but thousands of other families are at risk as the third wave peaks.

The government has promised to do what’s needed, and it has accepted that the crisis has reached a point where it must swallow its pride and once again ask for outside help. It needs to stop with the half measures, act on the advice of its own experts, and finally do what needs to be done. Thoughts and prayers for Emily Viegas won’t cut it.