Three more cases of COVID-19 in the City of Kawartha Lakes

There have been three more confirmed COVID-19 cases in the City of Kawartha Lakes, the Haliburton, Kawartha, Pine Ridge District Health Unit reported Monday afternoon.

The City of Kawartha Lakes — which has had outbreaks at Pinecrest Nursing Home and Case Manor Care both in Bobcaygeon and a unit at Ross Memorial Hospital in Lindsay — now has 142 confirmed cases, with 103 of them resolved.

Northumberland County has had 13 cases and Haliburton County has had seven cases, but all of them have been resolved and there have not been any new cases in those two counties for a few weeks.

The City of Kawartha Lakes has had 32, with 28 of them at

Pinecrest, along with the wife of a Pinecrest resident. But there have been no new Pinecrest deaths since April 9.

The health unit is doing more testing of residents this week to determine if the Pinecrest outbreak can be declared over.

Most of the residents have already tested negative, according to Pinecrest administrator Mary Carr, and the rest were being tested Monday for a second negative.

Earlier 32 staff members had also tested positive at Pinecrest.

The health unit also announced new guidelines on Monday on how community gardens can safely open and operate in the City of Kawartha Lakes and Northumberland and Haliburton counties for the season.

The guidelines, similar to ones issued last week for Peterborough city and county, include:

á Preventing members of the general public from using the garden. Access is only allowed for community garden members;

á Prohibiting anyone from entering the garden if they are sick with COVID-19 symptoms. Instead, they must stay home and complete Ontario’s online COVID-19 online self-assessment tool to see what additional care is needed;

á Limiting the number of people in a community garden to a maximum of five individuals at any one time. Gardeners must also maintain physical distance of two metres from others; á Using a sign-in and sign-out system to track who is gardening each day at the site;

á Posting signs around the community garden promoting handwashing, physical distancing and other prevention measures;

á Providing handwashing or hand sanitizer stations for gardeners;

á Directing members to bring and use their own garden tools as much as possible. Instructions on the proper cleaning of shared gardening tools is also being provided.

As of Monday, 30 inmates at the Warkworth Institution medium-security federal prison had been tested for COVID-19 and all 30 have tested negative, according to Correctional Services Canada.