Lockdown measures are bearing fruit, Drouin says

Quebec's lockdown measures appear to be having a positive effect in Montreal, where COVID-19 cases are declining, public health director Dr. Mylène Drouin said Friday.

Drouin provided an update on the pandemic in Montreal at a news conference alongside CIUSSS Centre-sud director Sonia Bélanger.

“I think we have positive things to say today, and we're seeing that the measures that we've been working on, on a population level ... are giving some good effects,” Drouin said.

The city's positivity rate for COVID-19 stands at 8.8 per cent as of Friday, and its reproduction rate — the number of people a COVID -19 positive person infects — is under one, Drouin said.

“This is quite important, we haven't seen this during the fall season and we are expecting to see it being under one for the next couple of weeks,” she said.

Still, Montreal is dealing with more than 400 COVID-19 outbreaks, including nearly 170 in work environments, 23 in schools, 35 in daycares and more than 140 in the health network.

“So we will have to (make) some efforts in the next couple of weeks to maintain this tendency and to make sure we get back to a level where we are more comfortable and we regain the capacity of our health-care system,” Drouin said.

About 1,000 people are missing from the workforce because they're either COVID-19 positive, awaiting test results, or are in preventive isolation. There are 49 long-term care homes, 44 private residences and 28 intermediary resources with outbreaks, Bélanger said.

“That's an increase compared with last week,” she said.

Premier François Legault has warned if Covid-related hospitalizations do not decrease, the province's lockdown measures could be extended beyond Feb. 8.

Quebec reported another 1,631 cases of COVID-19 on Friday, for a total of 223,367 across the province since the pandemic began. Of the latest cases, 681 were reported in Montreal for a cumulative total of 89,607.

As of Friday, 9,361 people have died from COVID-19 in Quebec (4,182 in Montreal), 1,426 people are in hospital (696 in Montreal) and 212 are receiving treatment in intensive care (112 in Montreal).

“We are still the epicentre and we still have indicators that are really high, so of course some of the confinement measures are probably going to stay,” Drouin said.

Hot zones are the current focus of Montreal's public health department, though Drouin said positivity rates have also been decreasing in those neighbourhoods.

Montreal areas with the highest cases per 100,000 people over the past two weeks are Montreal East, St-léonard, Montreal North, Rivière-des-prairies, Ahuntsic–cartierville and Anjou.

To locate more cases in those areas and to plan for a potential increase in demand for testing, Montreal will be introducing rapid tests.

“Those tests are going to be for people who have symptoms because they're more effective in those circumstances,” Drouin said.

Montreal has started vaccinating health-care workers who are part of the first priority group in hospitals, Bélanger said, which is anyone who works with the public.

“We identified the exact number of people to vaccinate and it's 65,000, and we're going as things progress with the vaccines we're receiving.”