Tests are encouraged for any symptoms
Medical officer of health wants to hunt hidden cases in Niagara
There is no shortage of COVID-19 testing capacity in Niagara, says the region’s acting medical officer of health, who is calling on anyone with even the mildest of possible coronavirus symptoms to come forward.
“In Niagara, at least, I don’t think the issue is the ability to test more, but rather people who might have only one mild symptom not getting assessed for testing,” he said. “Right now, people who have those very mild symptoms are being tested.” As Ontario prepares for a phased-in process to reopen an economy shuttered by the virus, Hirji said public health units are readying themselves to be the bulwark against the spread of novel coronavirus.
When businesses open and communities emerge from lockdown, case management and contact tracing is going to be critical to finding new cases and stopping emerging outbreaks before they spread widely.
Testing is at the heart of that exercise.
Without widespread and quick testing, public health officers won’t know where to start looking for new cases.
Hirji said when the COVID-19
pandemic began, there were critical shortages of testing supplies, including swabs and reagents. As a result, testing was rationed to critical cases including health-care workers, patients living a facility with an outbreak and people who exhibited multiple symptoms.
“Since then, the Ontario government has done a pretty good job at stockpiling those supplies,” Hirji said, adding the number of labs processing tests has also expanded greatly. “So in that regard, there is a lot of excess testing capacity.”
In Niagara, the hospital system handles the majority of testing, processing more than 400 people daily at its two COVID-19 assessment centres. Hirji said Niagara Health has the ability to increase testing capacity if necessary.
There are also clinics and primary care doctors who are doing testing, although there is no data being released for those numbers.
Hirji has said public health is not releasing regionwide testing numbers because the provincial government has asked health units not to.
Niagara Health publishes its testing data daily. As of Monday, it had tested 8,462 people, with 375, or 4.42 per cent, of them testing positive for COVID-19 — a rate lower than the provincewide figure of 5.23 per cent.
The rate of positive tests is an indicator of the slowing spread of the virus in Niagara, Hirji said.
There were five new confirmed cases in Niagara Monday, bringing the historic total number to 523. At least 53 people with COVID-19 have died, according to Niagara Health and public health data. Some 332 people have recovered, leaving Niagara with 138 active cases.
Although the spread of the virus outside of long-term care homes has declined sharper, Hirji said there must be unconfirmed cases in the community in people who are asymptomatic or with extremely mild symptoms.
That is why he is asking for people with even one mild symptom related to COVID-19 infection to call public health or their primary care doctor to get tested.
Niagara has the testing capacity and, given the volume of testing materials and declining infection rates, it can be used to identify new cases.
Hirji, pointing to weekend outbreaks at Greater Niagara General Hospital in Niagara Falls, said the public should not take the falling rate of new cases for granted.
The reason Niagara is in this position is because the public has taken physical distancing to heart and needs to keep doing so to push the infection rate lower.
“I know the weather is getting nicer, and we want people to enjoy the outdoors, but to also keep in mind that we cannot ease off now and that physical distancing remains critical,” he said.