‘Stay home’ is the advice as city starts to reopen
Two inmates and five staff test positive in outbreak at Barton Street jail
Seven have been infected with COVID-19 in an outbreak at the Hamilton-Wentworth Detention Centre as local leaders continue to express apprehension about the stay-at-home order coming to an end.
“I’m still quite concerned and we still need to be very cautious about moving forward,” medical officer of health Dr. Elizabeth Richardson said at a briefing Tuesday, as Hamilton moved into the red zone of the province’s COVID-19 framework.
Despite the city reporting 60 new infections of COVID-19 Tuesday, Richardson said the overall trend is downward.
But the worry is the fast-spreading variants which now make up about seven per cent of the province’s cases.
In addition, numbers are significantly improved from January but still far from the optimal green zone in much of Ontario.
“While there is reason for some optimism ... the rates in many health units remain high and the emergence of the variants remains a significant threat,” said Dr. Barbara Yaffe, Ontario’s associate chief medical officer of health.
She stressed the need for people to stay home on the same day the order lifted in Hamilton and most of Ontario.
“We are not reopening the province,” Yaffe said. “This is not permission to start gathering with your friends and
coworkers. This is not the time to get complacent. I’m strongly urging everybody to continue to stay at home and limit nonessential trips.”
Richardson also tried to balance the mixed message of increased reopening while urging people only to go out for essentials.
“It’s not ‘let’s go out shopping … let’s gather with our friends at the mall, let’s go out for dinner with a group of friends,’ ” said Richardson. “It’s very much a matter of there is some reopening so you can access those things but as much as possible you should be able to stay at home.”
The stakes are high with Yaffe warning of another pandemic wave that would potentially be worse than the first two “if we let loose” while the variants are spreading.
None have been detected yet in Hamilton, but the city’s reproduction rate is 0.88, which is above the 0.7 threshold that provincial projections suggested could lead to exponential growth of the variants.
“I’m hoping people see what happens when it goes too far ... and take a more sombre approach,” said Richardson.
The potential to undo all the progress made in the last month that has seen the weekly rate of new cases per 100,000 population drop to 41 from a high of 164 is not lost on the Emergency Operations Centre (EOC).
“Generally as we’ve closed and reopened ... we understand clearly why,” said EOC director Paul Johnson.
“But there’s a little sense of nervousness because we are unclear about these new variants that are coming along and their impact on the community.”
The EOC is limiting city bookings to Hamilton residents only and asking those skating, tobogganing or using escarpment stairs and playgrounds to voluntarily wear a mask because it’s not in the bylaw to force them.
Richardson is also not imposing any restrictions beyond what is already in place in the red zone.
“At this point there is nothing specific for us to point to that is missing there,” she said. “There’s nothing in particular that we think needs to be added.”
Mayors and chairs from the 11 largest municipal governments across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area also expressed concern about the threat of the fast-spreading variants as the province starts to reopen and the need for vigilance.
“People are still dying, people are still in the hospital ICU and people are off ill,” said Yaffe. “We need to keep doing everything we’ve been doing to keep this infection down.”
Hamilton hospital are caring for 49 COVID patients as of Tuesday.
Six Nations reported its third death of the pandemic as a surge of cases continues there with 44 new infections in the last seven days. More than onethird of the 243 cases at Six Nations over the pandemic have been in February.
Hamilton declared new outbreaks Feb. 15 in vulnerable settings, including two inmates and five staff testing positive at the Barton Street jail.
It’s not the first time there have been COVID cases at the detention centre — a staff member tested positive in March while an inmate was infected in April.
But it is the highest number of cases at one time.
“We have been in regular communication with the facility to assess the outbreak and will be providing any support (and) guidance on testing as well as infection prevention and control practices,” public heath said in a statement.
The other new outbreak is at Good Shepherd Men’s Centre on Mary Street, where one client has tested positive at the shelter.
Hamilton has 18 ongoing COVID
outbreaks including the jail, six seniors’ homes, three hospital units, two workplaces, one daycare and five community organizations, which are shelters or other vulnerable congregate living.
There are also two big outbreaks in Burlington, with the largest at Mount Nemo Christian Nursing Home on Guelph Line, where 65 have been infected and eight residents have died since Jan. 10. Chartwell Brant Centre on North Shore Boulevard East has had 40 test positive and one resident die in a COVID outbreak declared Dec. 25.