1) Quebec’s top public health officer is asserting that during the #pandemic, the province has been hit harder than the rest of Canada partly because a more “invasive” and “lethal” strain of the #coronavirus is circulating here. In this thread, I will fact-check this assertion.

2) Dr. Horacio Arruda offered this explanation when asked by a reporter Friday why Quebec is still reporting more #COVID19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths than other provinces, even after the first wave. Arruda cited a study of the #coronavirus in his answer.

3) “There was a study done on the virus that entered Quebec," @ArrudaHoracio explained. "It’s different from the one that was in China. (This strain) came more from Europe and has a morbidity and mortality rate that is much more significant.”

4) As a health reporter who has been following the #pandemic in Quebec closely since the beginning, Arruda’s response puzzled me. The assertion also appears to have puzzled Fatima Tokhmafshan, a geneticist at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre.

5) Tokhmafshan has been studying the strains of #coronavirus circulating in Quebec. On Saturday, she wrote a Twitter thread to try to make sense of Arruda’s explanation. She noted that the most common variant in Quebec is known as 614G.

6) Tokhmafshan confirmed that most of the strains entering Quebec came from Europe, where the prevailing variant is 614G. This is what she had to say about this strain: “Scientific evidence shows this variant is not more dangerous.”

7) Tokhmafshan cited two scientific studies that found 614G is “more efficient in its transmission.” But both studies determined that 614G “does not correlate with (a) higher mortality rate or clinical severity.” So why did Arruda make this assertion?

8) Tokhmafshan observed that the #coronavirus strain circulating in Quebec is also “commonly found in other parts of Canada.” She concluded her thread by stating “it is irresponsible to blame how the #pandemic is unfolding on a variant, as opposed to bad policy.”

9) Communication by authorities is critical during in a #pandemic. At the very least, Dr. Arruda should elaborate on the assertions he made on Friday about the #coronavirus in Quebec and make public the study to which he alluded.

10) Arruda’s assertion came as Quebec recorded 637 #COVID cases Friday, compared with 409 in more populous Ontario. Quebec posted 698 cases Saturday and an 18-hospitalization spike compared with 435 cases and 13 new hospitalizations in Ontario, which also has the 614G strain.

11) Meanwhile, Montreal posted 272 #COVID19 cases Saturday, up from 229 the day before, as the rising orange line in the chart below indicates. The city’s rolling seven-day average rose to 98.13 cases per million population, barely below would might be considered the red zone.

12) At the neighborhood level, the centre of the city — comprising Côte-des-Neiges, downtown and Parc-Extension — continues to dominate the metropolis in the number of daily cases, acting as an engine for the spread of the #coronavirus. (See below.) End of thread and stay safe.

Addendum: I am indebted in this thread largely to the expertise of Fatima Tokhmafshan. Know that @DeNovo_Fatima is guided by science and the facts.