Niagara contact tracing pushed to the limits
Public health has had to curtail some aspects to deal with new cases
Niagara Region Public Health has had to curtail some aspects of its detailed contact tracing to deal with the capacity of new cases of COVID-19.
While the region is still able to make contact with all new cases within 24 hours, there are certain cases every day that get held over to the following morning because staff don’t have a chance to get to them.
“We are really up against the max of our capacity right now,” said Dr. Mustafa Hirji, Niagara’s acting medical officer of health, Sunday.
“If our cases go up, that’s probably going to build up and start to become a backlog we don’t get caught up on.”
Niagara reported 43 new cases of COVID-19 this weekend, with 18 Saturday and 25 Sunday.
Of those, 12 were due to contacts with a previous known case, 11 were from community transmission and 20 were still being investigated or the data hadn’t been inputted yet.
The total new cases for the week from Monday to Sunday was 151.
Still, Niagara is in a far better position than some other regions that are beyond capacity.
Hamilton and Waterloo both reported their single-day high for cases on Saturday, with 95 in Hamilton and 86 in Waterloo.
They are both in the provinc
e’s more strict red, or control, category for COVID-19 restrictions, along with Halton, Durham, Windsor and York areas. Niagara remains at the lower orange level.
Hirji said Waterloo and Halton public health units have turned to others in the province in recent days for help with contact tracing because they are overwhelmed and Hamilton asked for help from the province.
Niagara’s public heath department has not been able to aid with that request because it’s struggling to keep up with its own numbers.
“We’re, unfortunately, not able to do that because we’re maxed out just with our own cases. We’d obviously love to be able to help out at other times,” Hirji said, adding there are some smaller northern health units in the province that haven’t seen the same jump in numbers and might be able to help.
“We are trying to treat this as a provincial system where we work together.”
Hirji said if neighbours can help neighbours it protects everyone by keeping infections from spreading to other areas.
To deal with its own case load, Niagara public health is triaging contacts of positive cases and following up with those they sense are at a higher risk to develop COVID-19. People who are at higher risk are those who may have had close interaction with an infected person, such as being within two metres, spending a longer time together, making physical contact or not wearing masks.
As well, some of the detailed questions public health asks in interviews to collect for statistical purposes are no longer being done.
Niagara has had 2,128 cases of COVID-19 since its first case in March.
There are currently 203 people with COVID-19 in the region and another 1,842 people who have recovered. Eightythree people who had the virus have died.
There were 10 patients with COVID-19 in the Niagara Health hospital system on Sunday.
The region has 16 active outbreaks, with six at health-care facilities. A two-month-long outbreak at Millennium Trail Manor long-term care home in Niagara Falls was declared over on Saturday. Another outbreak declared over in recent days was at Extendicare in St. Catharines.