Essential workers in Ottawa ready for vaccination Multi-Skilled Journalist Colton Praill Cases of COVID-19 in the capital are skyrocketing. The city’s top doctor warning the curve has only worsened since moving into the red zone. According to some medical experts, this is the pandemic within the COVID-19 pandemic. “This isn’t necessarily a new pandemic but it's a new pandemic within the existing pandemic. The face of the disease has changed, the crisis within the hospitals is of a different, more urgent nature,” epidemiologist Dr. Raywat Deonandan said. Deonandan says the new variant running rampant around the capital is more transmissible, often targeting younger people and frequently transmitting in places of work.