More investment needed to counter COVID-19 misinformation, Canada’s top doctor says – National

After a year that saw the highest number of COVID-19 deaths and a massive increase in infections, Canada’s top doctor says more investments are needed to combat misinformation about vaccines and pandemic measures to ensure Canada is ready for possible new variants of concern.

“This is the pandemic that is occurring in (a) full-on social media age, and all of us had to learn how to deal with that as the pandemic evolved. And it’s not easy,” Dr. Theresa Tam said in a year-end interview with Global News.

Misinformation is false or inaccurate information, which can be spread innocuously by those who may not be fully informed of the truth. Disinformation is considered more deliberate and can include malicious content such as hoaxes, phishing and propaganda, according to a definition provided by the United Nations.

Tam called 2022 the “Omicron age,” after the variant arrived in late 2021 and quickly became the dominant variant for the remainder of the year.

Omicron and its hundreds of subvariants have taught the world that SARS-CoV-2 could be much more contagious than previously thought and that the virus is cunningly adept at evading immunity, Tam said.

For example, more than 70 per cent of Canadians have likely been infected with COVID-19 since Omicron arrived, compared to less than five per cent of the population before Omicron, according to blood test studies funded by the federal government through the national COVID-19 Immunity Task Force.

But the virus has also proved it is capable of presenting new surprises and challenges, which is why Tam says it will continue to be a public health concern in 2023.

Communicating this ongoing uncertainty has been a challenge, Tam says, especially when Canadians are “fed up” with the pandemic.

But the rise of mis- and disinformation about COVID-19 vaccines and pushback against public health measures has made that task even more difficult, Tam admitted.

The lessons learned over the last three years of the pandemic have allowed Canada and the world to be better equipped to weather future waves or new variants of the virus, Tam said.

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