Niagara at risk of return to Stage 2, Hirji says
36 new cases confirmed on the weekend have officials getting worried
If Niagara’s COVID-19 cases continue to increase at the same level reported during the weekend, Dr. Mustafa Hirji warned the region may be forced back into Stage 2 of the province’s reopening plan.
With 36 new COVID-19 infections — 13 confirmed Saturday and 23 on Sunday — Niagara’s acting medical officer of health said he hopes they are a “oneoff spike.”
Although he said “the province hasn’t been super clear” regarding when a region would be forced back into Stage 2, “if Niagara started to average around 17 or 18 cases per day, we would now be heading into that region where apparently the province would be giving it serious thought.”
Hirji said he expected to see a short-lived increase in infections resulting from family gatherings following the Thanksgiving holiday.
While it’s too early to know for sure if the recent increases are associated with those family gatherings, and “we need to see what happens in the next few days,” he said the timing of the new infections is consistent with what he expected.
The new cases bring Niagara’s total infections since the pandemic began to 1,347, with 68 deaths reported by the health department.
Record numbers were also
reported across the province on the weekend — with 978 cases reported Saturday, followed by 1,042 on Sunday.
Hirji said those provincial numbers are concerning.
“Obviously, several places — Toronto, Ottawa, Peel, York — seem to be the ones with the biggest numbers, and they’re already in Stage 2 and struggling to keep their numbers down,” he said. “That’s obviously not an encouraging sign and a challenge for them. I’m certainly hoping they’re able to turn it around soon.”
Currently, about two-thirds of the region’s cases are as a result of close contact with someone previously diagnosed with the virus, “and that’s always good news because it means that it’s transmission chains that we already have some knowledge of,” Hirji said.
While most cases are now among younger people, he said he’s also concerned about the potential of the virus being spread to older, more vulnerable people.
The number of active outbreaks of the coronavirus grew to eight in the past few days, with five of those being at longterm-care homes, two community-based and one at a congregate care facility.
On Friday, an outbreak was declared at Gilmore Lodge long-term-care home in Fort Erie — it’s the third Niagara Region-run home currently dealing with a COVID-19 outbreak.
Although the Region reported last week at least two staff members each from Meadows of Dorchester in Niagara Falls and Rapelje Lodge in Welland were diagnosed with the virus, Hirji said the recent outbreak at Gilmore lodge was the result of mixture of both staff and residents testing positive.
“The most important thing that we need to change right now, is we need to, for a short period of time, really pull back to just our households for our close contact with others. That’s how we’re going to limit
the number of contacts, take away the opportunity for infection to spread very widely and really bring numbers back down,” he said.
“Once numbers come back down, we can, of course, expand our social circles a little bit again.”
As people begin showing symptoms of seasonal illness, Hirji is warning “this year that
mild cold could be COVID-19.”
“If they have symptoms of infection, they need to isolate right away and get tested.
“You don’t want to be heading out of home and possibly spreading that infection around.”