COVID-19 super cluster declared over
Long-term-care home outbreaks no longer generating new cases
After at least 41 local cases, two known long-term-care outbreaks and an unknown number of linked infections in the GTA, the made-in-niagara COVID-19 super-spreader cluster has finally run out of steam.
On Monday, Niagara’s acting medical officer of health, Dr. Mustafa Hirji, said the cluster linked to 20-somethings that formed in early October and rapidly spread across eight Niagara communities has not been linked to any new recent cases.
“We have actually declared that community outbreak over,” said Hirji, citing it as a ray of good news for Niagara on the pandemic front.
The cluster formed because of the behaviour of young adults, with a median age of 24, who were spreading the virus at restaurants, bars and at house parties.
The public health department said cases from that cluster spread the virus to workplaces, retail outlets and into two longterm-care homes. Hirji has not identified the homes but said neither one has recorded COVID-19 related deaths.
Hirji said there has been a recent small, but noticeable, decline in cases of people under the age of 40 — the demographic driving new cases in Niagara — while the case growth in other ages has remained largely static.
The result, Hirji said, has been a slight decline in the local infection rate. Where the number of new cases daily was in the
high 20s and sometimes low 30s, that number has fallen into the middle to high teens.
The exception was 36 infections confirmed Saturday. Although there were a large number of 20-somethings again driving the number of new cases, Hirji said there was no “definite pattern” to those cases.
There were 19 new cases confirmed Monday, bringing the total number of active cases to 208.
Among those cases are new long-term-care and retirement home cases. While each home has only a few cases, according to Hirji, the number of homes with COVID-19 outbreaks has been rising. Three homes were added to the growing list in the past few days: Garden City Manor in St. Catharines on Sunday, Rapelje Lodge in Welland on Saturday and Bella Senior Care Residence in Niagara Falls on Thursday.
There are eight homes with COVID-19 outbreaks.
There have been at least 82 Niagara residents with the virus who have died since the start of the pandemic, 17 of who have died since Oct. 5.