Criteria for economic reopening still unclear
MPP wants explanation why Region wasn’t greenlit for next stage
Should Niagara be allowed to further open its economy? Jeff Burch doesn’t know, and for him, that is the problem.
“I’m not a doctor or a scientist. I rely on what those who are experts say about this. I rely on what the science says about it,” said Burch, MPP for Niagara Centre.
“But I don’t know what metrics the government is using. The communication around this has been terrible. I am not even sure the government knows.”
While the government of Premier Doug Ford said much of the province will move to Stage 2 of the pandemic economic reopening — a phase that will include opening of more businesses, public spaces and other services — Niagara will have to wait.
Along with Toronto, Hamilton and Haldimand-norfolk, Niagara will remain in Stage 1 lockdown for now.
Niagara’s public health department was not consulted and only learned of the decision when the premier announced it Monday.
See related comments from the mayors of several Niagara’s communities on page A3.
That omission, said Burch, is frustrating because it is not clear how the province is deciding which communities will reopen and which will not.
During a Tuesday press briefing, Ford said Niagara’s recent spike in cases — it was driven by an outbreak at Pioneer Flower Farms that has sickened at least 65 employees — was the reason Niagara was not approved.
According to provincial government documents, there are four sets of metrics considered when deciding if a region moves on to another phase of reopening: virus spread and containment, health system capacity, public health system capacity, and incident tracking capacity.
These are similar metrics recently proposed by all 34 of Ontario’s public health units to guide a region-by-region reopening of the province.
However, the provincial documents do not attach any data to those metrics, explain how success or failure is measured, how metrics are weighed against each other, or how the numbers will inform decision making.
Niagara West Progressive Conservative MPP Sam Oosterhoff — Niagara’s lone government member — declined an interview request from The St. Catharines Standard Tuesday. In an emailed statement, he said he was trying to get answers from the Ministry of Health and Long-term Care. He also provided a statement from the ministry which noted Niagara’s increased case count and proximity to the border as a COVID-19 risk factor.
The region’s acting medical officer of health, Dr. Mustafa Hirji, said he has not been informed about the metrics the province is using.
He said the virus spread probably relates to the case count, which was impacted by the farm outbreak. The hospital and public health capacities are about the ability to handle emerging cases, he believes, while incident tracking is about investigating new cases.
On the last metric, Hirji said, Niagara public health has done well, exceeding provincial benchmarks of responding to new cases within 24 hours 98 per cent of the time, and connecting with contacts of an infected person within 24 hours 90 per cent of the time.
While Hirji does not know how the province is measuring the metrics in the Stage 2 document, he said the data alone has to be used in the context of a region’s particular situation.
Not only is Niagara on the border with the United States, where COVID-19 infection rates are much higher, but it is also close to Hamilton, which saw a rise in cases in youths, and Norfolk, which is also dealing with a large farm outbreak.
So while Niagara’s overall level of community spread is low, typically in the low single digits daily, several factors may be conspiring to keep Niagara in Stage 1 for now, Hirji said.
Still, Burch said the Ford government needs to be more transparent about how it is making reopening decisions and tell the public how its metrics are being used to make those decisions.