Canada ski resort linked to largest outbreak of P1 Covid variant outside Brazil
For ski resorts, spring normally marks a final chance for visitors to carve sun-drenched runs before the season ends.
But at Canada’s most famous ski resort, the gondolas have stopped, and the slopes are eerily quiet.
The Whistler Blackcomb ski resort was shut down by provincial authorities at the end of March after they realised that P1, the highly infectious coronavirus variant traced back to Brazil, was spreading rapidly throughout the community.
As provinces across Canada break records for new cases of the virus, experts have grown increasingly troubled by the rapid and covert spread of variants. With 877 confirmed cases of P1, the province of British Columbia is now the centre of the world’s largest sequenced outbreak of the variant outside Brazil – and nearly a quarter of those cases have been linked to Whistler.
P1 is believed to be a highly infectious mutation of the virus that appears to be more fatal among young people and has the ability to reinfect victims. In Brazil, the P1 variant – along with myriad policy failures – has ushered in a total collapse of the country’s healthcare system. [Continue reading…]