Niagara must stay the course on COVID-19
Medical Officer of Health cautious as economic activity set to resume
On Tuesday, Ontario’s slumbering economy will take its first real steps toward reawakening, as some retail stores open under infection control restrictions.
Whether or not these first steps toward a new normal in the era of COVID-19 causes new outbreaks of the novel coronavirus in Niagara will depend entirely on how residents behave, says the region’s acting medical officer of health.
“That is one of the question marks. We got to this point because while the restrictions we are living with were coercive, people really did take them seriously and did the right things,” said Dr. Mustafa Hirji. “We cannot back off of social distancing. We cannot back off of working from home if you can and the hand hygiene. The fact is the virus is out there and there is more risk with more activity. So people need to continue to be as responsible as they have been.”
Niagara’s COVID-19 curve continued its weeks-long flattening trend Friday, with only three new confirmed cases. One of those cases was a health-care worker who contracted the virus outside of Niagara, and the other two were cases with an unidentified source of infection.
Aside from the dozen cases confirmed Thursday, the daily count of new cases has been in the single digits for the entire week. Hirji said this fits the longer trend going back to midApril, where each week has seen fewer overall cases than the preceding seven days.
“More recently, this is because there have been fewer cases in long-term-care and retirement homes and while there are outbreaks in local hospitals, the number of cases has been relatively few,” said Hirji, who also said the outbreaks at the Henley House long-term-care home in St. Catharines, along with two Community Living group homes in St. Catharines were declared over Friday.
Friday’s new cases brings the total number of local COVID-19 cases since the first one was discovered in St. Catharines on March 13 to 578 — 97 of which remain active.
As has been the case for at least two weeks, the number of people who have recovered from COVID-19, 425 people as of Friday afternoon, is greater than the number currently sick.
At least 56 people in Niagara with the virus have died.
While the local institutional outbreaks simmer, the number of confirmed cases outside those facilities has fallen dramatically. This is because, Hirji said, Niagara residents have been physically distancing, washing their hands and wearing masks.
Hirji said as economic and social activity increases, residents should not be lulled into thinking the crisis is over. Until a vaccine is available and widely used, the virus will remain in circulation. In order to keep the number of new cases low, he said people need to continue to adhere to infection control measures.
It will be about two weeks before health officials will know if the first phase of economic reopening triggers a wave of new COVID-19 cases.
“It takes five to seven days after becoming infected before many people will show symptoms and get tested,” he said. “And then it’s up to three days to get a test result back.”
There is also currently a lag in getting lab results back in some cases, he said. The provincial government is testing all residents of long-term-care homes. Tests in homes with COVID-19 outbreaks get prioritized, which can set back the processing of other tests.
Hirji said the uncertainty around the public health impact of economic reopening is why he is continuing to ask residents who have even a mild symptom related to COVID-19 to contact the health department or their family doctor to get tested.
“We want to ensure we are capturing as many cases as possible,” he said. “So I will say again, if you have a mild symptom, even if it is something you might normally ignore, contact us.”