COVID-19 numbers tilt upward
End of lockdown ‘was a signal to people that they did not need to be as vigilant,’ Hirji says
Niagara ended its first week of red zone reopening with a noticeable rise in COVID-19 cases and more variant cases discovered, pushing the region’s pandemic data in the wrong direction.
And the catch is this week’s data does not account for the increased social and economic activity created by the red zone because it can take up to two weeks for major changes to be reflected in local COVID-19 metrics.
Dr. Mustafa Hirji, Niagara’s acting medical officer of health, said mobility data — information gleaned from anonymous cellphone data — shows that local residents began to do more shopping and recreational activities when the provincial government ended the stay-athome orders and moved the region into a modified “grey zone” lockdown.
“It was a signal to people that they did not need to be as vigilant about public health measures,” said Hirji, who thinks that increased activity is partly responsible for stopping Niagara’s declining infection rate. He said the further loosening of restrictions in the red zone will result in more business and social activity, which in turn could lead to more infection.
Niagara saw 24 new cases confirmed Friday, at the end of a week where nearly every significant pandemic measurement tilted upward.
Among those metrics is a growth in the number of the more infectious novel coronavirus variant cases. When the provincial government announced Niagara was moving into the red zone, there were 11 variant cases in the region. As of Friday, there are 54, two of which are confirmed to the variant first found in the U.K..
Hirji believes these variants, which are 50 per cent more infectious, will rapidly overtake the original strain of the virus and make combatting the pandemic more difficult.
“If I had my druthers, the entire Golden Horseshoe area would stay effectively in a full lockdown for six weeks,” said Hirji. “That would buy us time to get the variants under control, get the infection rate down and get more vaccines into arms so that when we do start to reopen, we would not have to worry about future lockdowns.”
Hirji said “the province likely doesn’t want to hear that,” because it has taken a more aggressive approach to reopening.
Two regions — Thunder Bay and Simcoe-muskoka have already had their “emergency brake” applied and have been put back into lockdown. In communities like Hamilton, where infections are on the rise again, there is a public debate about applying the brake.
Hirji said given the provincial government’s insistence on an aggressive reopening, it is unlikely it would move Niagara back into lockdown on his recommendation as a proactive measure to limit the virus spread. Rather, he said, the province seems more apt to act when cases have spiked rather than when it is still possible to prevent a wave of infections.
Hirji said the early reopening also makes moving back into a lockdown more difficult because of the economic ramifications.
“I think that staying in lockdown for a longer period does less harm than reopening for a short time then moving quickly back into a lockdown,” Hirji said. “So that is a complication I have to consider when making recommendations.”