Niagara can avoid more restrictions, Hirji says
Niagara stays orange as another region moves into red COVID-19 level
Niagara can avoid moving into the province’s more restrictive COVID-19 red or grey zones and maybe even drop down a level if residents limit social contacts, the acting medical officer of health says.
There are eight areas of the province that are currently facing more restrictions than Niagara is dealing with under the province’s COVID-19 framework.
Starting Monday, the province will move Windsor-essex from the orange restrict level that Niagara is currently in to the red control level — the most restrictive level available before widescale business closures.
Dr. Mustafa Hirji said it’s not inevitable that Niagara will follow that path.
“I absolutely believe we can avoid that and my goal is that we actually end up in yellow as opposed to red,” Hirji said.
“I think it’s very do-able but it’s only do-able if we limit our social contacts for the next few weeks and get our numbers back down. If we can do that by Christmas that would be a really good thing.”
Niagara had 26 new COVID-19 cases on Friday, bringing its total since Monday to 108.
The province’s colour-coded framework for restrictions has five levels moving from green, with the least restrictions, to yellow, orange, red and grey, which has the maximum
measures. Grey triggers a lockdown which Toronto and Peel are currently experiencing.
There are six regions now in the red level, including Hamilton, Halton, Windsor-essex, Waterloo, Durham and York.
Hirji said the province has seven metrics it’s looking at before determining if a region moves into another level.
That includes the reproductive number, which is the average number of individuals that one case of COVID-19 will spread to and infect. Niagara’s reproductive number is one, which puts it in the lower yellow level for the metric.
“That reproductive number of one implies that we’re kind of flat,” Hirji said.
The number of new cases of COVID-19 per week for a population of 100,000 is also studied. Anything between 25 to 40 is in the orange level.
Niagara is currently at 33.6 per week, though the region did spike to 42.6 earlier in the month. However, Hirji said all of the other measures weren’t quite as bad, so it wasn’t enough to trigger a change in restrictions at that time.
Other metrics the province looks at are the percentage of new cases that have no known exposure and the number of outbreaks in a region.
The public health system’s capacity to be able to follow up with cases and contacts is also taken into account. Hirji said public health is meeting the goal, just barely, this week.
Hospital system capacity is also measured and Hirji said Niagara is doing well as there aren’t a lot of hospital beds being filled up by COVID-19 patients.
Niagara Health reported eight patients total in its hospitals on Friday. It has admitted164 since the start of the pandemic in March.
The percentage of COVID-19 tests that come back positive is also part of the province’s metrics. Niagara is seeing 2.1 per cent positivity.
Hirji said overall, for most of the measures, Niagara falls in the orange level but he’d like to see the numbers go back down.
If Niagara dropped to the yellow level, he said it would lift some restrictions on businesses which would be good for the economy and would give the region a buffer in the event there is a spike in cases from gatherings over Christmas holidays.
“But my hope is that we will be able to drive this number down again. That will happen only though if we limit our social contacts with people right now.”