Niagara headed to higher alert
Data shows Region will be placed in Yellow level status on Friday, suggests medical officer of health
When Ontario Premier Doug Ford revealed the province’s new colour-coded COVID-19 alert system, Niagara was placed in the green zone — the safest of five designations that determine what kind of public health restrictions will be imposed on a community.
Don’t get used to it. Like most Ontario communities, Niagara’s inclusion in the green “prevent” zone — which has comparatively few restrictions — is just a place holder.
When the new system comes into effect Friday after a data review by the provincial government, Niagara is likely to move into the yellow “protect” zone, or the orange “restrict” level. The red “control” level imposes much stricter measures on businesses and gatherings and beyond that is a full lockdown.
If Niagara is moved into the yellow zone, little will change in the region. The restrictions currently in place across Ontario are largely the same in the yellow zone.
Niagara’s acting medical officer of health, Dr. Mustafa Hirji, said based on local COVID-19 metrics, Niagara doesn’t belong in the green zone.
“I would say we would at least be moved into the protection zone,” said Hirji. “Of course, we still have to see how the rest of the week unfolds.”
The new government system includes, for the first time, publicly released COVID-19 metrics and thresholds that will be used to determine what level of restrictions a community will
be placed under. Some, like the percentage of positive COVID-19 and the reproductive number of the virus in a community, are set with identifiable targets according to government information.
Others, like the capacity of local hospitals and public health units to manage the pandemic, are more subjective.
However, Hirji said at the very least the system will give Ontarians a better idea of how Ford’s government is making decisions — even if he remains skeptical if the gradual imposition of restrictions from one zone to the next will help stem the rising tide of COVID-19 infections.
“The name of the game right now is limiting our social interactions,” said Hirji. “Right now, that means we have to rely on everyone do to their part to make that happen. If that doesn’t work I don’t know how (the new system) helps us do that without more stringent lockdowns.”
Key metrics in Niagara show that the region is headed to alert level yellow or orange this week.
For instance, the weekly rate of new cases for the yellow zone is 10 to 39.9 cases per 100,000. Hirji said Niagara is currently at 24.8 cases and rising.
Similarly, the province sets the COVID-19 reproductive rate — a calculation the projects how many people a single infected person will make sick with the novel coronavirus — at 1 for a region to be in the yellow zone. Niagara’s reproductive number is 1.4 and given the increasing case count locally, likely to continue to rise.
However, other metrics fall well within the yellow zone, including the number of positive COVID-19 tests. The provincial threshold is at 1 to 2.5 per cent and Niagara’s positivity rate is 1.3 per cent.
The number of hospital beds, ICU beds, ventilation and public health capacity to trace cases does not have measurable thresholds in the provincial system. But the public health department — which has been tracking and publishing a host of COVID-19 metrics for months — set thresholds established by past provincial guidance. In all of these areas, Niagara is below those thresholds.
“I don’t think it will be a scenario where they are looking at only one metric and then making decisions,” said Hirji.
“I cannot speak to why they are doing this now and not six months ago. Ultimately the province has to answer that,” said Hirji. “But there is a sustained conversation going on now about how decisions are made and requests for more data.”
The new alert system was announced on the same day as the public health department confirmed the second- highest count of new daily cases in Niagara since the pandemic began. Thirty-eight new cases were confirmed Tuesday — a number only exceeded by the 40 cases generated by the Pioneer Flower Farm greenhouse outbreak in June.
As has been the case for weeks, Niagara residents aged 20 to 39 make up the bulk of the cases and most are linked to previously known infections.
“This is the spillover from the rise in cases we have seen recently,” said Hirji, referring to the past four days of 20 or more cases daily. “There is a lot of household spread from these cases.”
The number of active cases has also jumped to first-wave levels, with 196 — a figure not seen since April.
At least 74 Niagara residents with the virus have died.