COVID-19 hitting families, says Hirji
Recent cases show difficulty containing spread of coronavirus
For the first time in more than two weeks, a jump in the number of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases in Niagara was not due to ongoing and deadly outbreaks in long-term-care homes.
Dr. Mustafa Hirji, the region’s acting medical officer of health, said most of Wednesday’s 20 new cases were the result of local transmission of the virus — and most of those were the result of a person in isolation at home infecting family members.
Hirji said the day’s case count does not change the overall downward trend of COVID-19 infections in Niagara, although it does highlight how infectious the virus is and how difficult it can be to keep it contained.
“This shows you how hard it can be for a family member to prevent the spread of the virus to others in their home,” said Hirji.
He added that several of Wednesday’s cases were older files that had an early presumptive lab test of positive but were lacking the final result.
“These are cases that were 10 or so days old, and today’s confirmation is the result of us following up to get the results,” he said.
The new cases bring Niagara’s historic total of COVID-19 patients to 405. One hundred and fifty-four people have recovered from the virus and at least 35 people with the infection have died.
Niagara now has at least 217 active cases.
The numbers are a dramatic rise from the past week which saw new cases being driven almost entirely by ongoing outbreaks that are sickening residents in four long-term-care homes. The three with the most cases — Lundy Manor in Niagara Falls, along with Royal Rose Place and Seasons Retirement Community both in Welland — have a combined 173 cases.
The virus has sickened 59 health-care workers at the three homes, and 114 residents. The home with the most cases, Royal Rose, has seen 42 staff — nearly everyone who
works there — infected with the virus.
Of Niagara’s 35 confirmed COVID-19 related deaths, 29 were residents at those three homes.
The fourth home, Albright Manor in Beamsville, has a single confirmed resident case.
Hirji warned that seeing a single-day jump in the case count, up or down, doesn’t reveal very much about the state of the pandemic in Niagara. He said it is important to watch trends developing over days or weeks, which is why he said it still appears as though the spread of the virus in the region is slowing down.
He said he is closely watching to see if two categories of cases re-emerge in Niagara — cases related to travel outside Canada, and cases for which the source of infection is unknown.
If those numbers, which have fallen to low single digits each day including Wednesday, were to rise again, it would be a sign of trouble, Hirji said. “When we know the source of an infection through contact tracing, we can isolate those people quickly and hopefully limit further spread of the virus,” Hirji said. “When the source isn’t known we cannot do that, and that can contribute to further spread of the virus.”
Hirji continued to ask Niagara residents with mild symptoms associated with COVID-19 to contact the public health department for assessment.
He said Ontario has an excess of testing capacity, which opens the door to getting tests done to find cases of people with mild symptoms and even those who are asymptomatic.
In the past week, public health expanded testing in long-termcare homes with outbreaks to include all residents and staff, including those with no symptoms, and found asymptomatic people were infected.