COVID-19 cases to rise as economy reopens
As distancing measures loosen, risk of exposure to coronavirus increases
For weeks, the rate of new COVID-19 cases has steadily fallen, flattening Niagara’s pandemic curve, even as long-term-care homes and hospitals cope with outbreaks of the potentially deadly virus.
As infection rates across the province drop and the provincial government gets ready to start a phased-in reopening of a shuttered economy, Niagara’s acting medical officer of health said residents should be prepared to see local numbers rise.
“As you start to resume that activity, you increase the risk of exposure and that will likely result in more cases and more spread of the virus,” said Dr. Mustafa Hirji.
While the rate of local in- fections has evened out — there were six new confirmed cases Tuesday, a statistic in keeping with the past week — Hirji warned a reduction in the infection rate is not the same as having no cases.
Without a vaccine, the novel coronavirus will still have the opportunity to spread. Infection control measures including hand hygiene and especially physical distancing have helped limit the ability of the virus to spread in the broader community.
However, as those shackles
come off, the virus will have more opportunity to infect more people.
That’s why Hirji said public health case management and contract tracing will be a vital tool in preventing widespread infections and future outbreaks when the economy does reopen.
Key to those efforts will be a robust testing regime to help public health identify where it needs to start looking.
While the provincial government is pushing more testing across the province, Hirji said Niagara is testing widely and has the capacity to do more.
That’s why he has asked anyone with even a mild case of one symptom related to COVID-19 to contact public health for an assessment.
The more cases that can be found, the faster public health can pounce on them before they spread.
However, Hirji said while there is a lot of testing happening, which is a vital tool, in Niagara, it is not a silver bullet to end the pandemic.
The problem, he said, is that because the virus is still in circulation, a person who tested negative one day might be infected the next and would test positive by the end of the week.
“Just because you test negative one day, doesn’t mean you are safe,” Hirji. “There is no such thing as zero risk right now.”
He pointed to aggressive testing done in long-term-care homes, where sick residents make up 30 per cent of all COVID-19 cases in Niagara.
As the outbreaks deepened, public health tested all residents and staff, even if they were asymptomatic, to ensure they knew exactly how many people were infected.
Some of the people who tested negative two weeks ago have, upon a second test, been found to have COVID-19 due to subsequent exposure.
Testing has to happen broadly enough to identify new cases, Hirji said, but COVID-19 infections are moving targets and that means testing and case management will be an ongoing effort for some time.
The exact number of tests undertaken in Niagara is not known, in part because public health does not report on testing. Hirji has said the provincial Ministry of Health has asked testing data not be released by local health units. Additionally, testing is being done by family doctors and clinics and, while the results have to be reported to public health, the tests themselves are not.
Niagara Health does the bulk of the testing for Niagara, and to date the hospital system has tested 8,661 people, with 375 of them testing positive.
For more information about COVID-19, visit www.niagararegion.ca.