■ Thunder Bay fights surge in cases,
District reports 33 new cases, including more than a dozen in area jail
Ontario’s top doctor is recommending the province consider a full lockdown in the Thunder Bay district as the northern community struggles with surging COVID-19 case numbers.
The Thunder Bay District Health Unit was moved into the red “control” zone on Feb. 16, but Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, Dr. David Williams, said at a Thursday press conference that they are considering recommending further restrictions in light of the rapid growth of new cases, which have climbed to more than 100 per 100,000 people in the district.
“We’ll try to affirm that with further discussions with (the local health unit) this evening ... We want to keep it at bay out of there and make sure we protect those remote communities,” Williams said.
On Thursday, the district declared 33 new cases, including 17 linked to close contact and one linked to the Thunder Bay District Jail. As of Thursday evening the Thunder Bay district had 315 active cases, with 16 people hospitalized and five in intensive care.
Ryan Imgrund, a Torontobased biostatistician, said his analysis of the COVID-19 case data shows the district has seen a 60 per cent increase week over week. What’s even more concerning is the reproductive rate, a measurement of growth, which he determined to be 1.4 compared to a provincial average of one.
“If that rate stays consistent … you’ll have more than 10 times the number of daily cases (in a month from now),” Imgrund said.
“It’s concerning because their weekly case rate is also high. For instance, if you have a very low case rate and your reproductive rate shoots up, you can sustain that for a little bit, but if your reproductive rate is high and your weekly and your case counts are also high, that’s when you run into complications.”
In January, a COVID-19 outbreak was declared at both the Thunder Bay District Jail, which remains in place, and at the Thunder Bay Correctional Centre, which ended on Feb. 20. An outbreak was also declared in the homeless community on Feb. 10 and there have been numerous outbreaks at local schools.
Lakehead Public Schools announced classes would move online starting Monday, with further instruction from the health unit to come.
Thunder Bay Mayor Bill Mauro said while it’s believed recently-released inmates and people experiencing homeless- ness are a factor in the rising rates, other gatherings have also been linked to continued community spread.
Mauro said he’s been writing applications to provincial and federal agencies pleading for assistance with finances and resources because the community is in a “very precarious” situation.
One of the continual challenges is for people to have somewhere to self-isolate if they are showing symptoms when released from jail. The city has two isolation centres and one recently had to increase its capacity to meet demand.
“In the last two to three weeks we’ve seen a real surge in terms of the demands on that isolation facility so it’s been ramped up significantly,” Mauro said. “But we’re now at a point where the health and human resources piece is a challenge for us to meet the need.”
“If this spike with this particular population continues to go in this direction, we may find ourselves in a situation where we don’t have the (staff ) to support the isolation centre’s increased capacity,” he said.
He added that the local hospital has been nearing capacity, with an occupancy rate of roughly 80 to 85 per cent as of Thursday.
Thunder Bay NDP MPP Judith Monteith-Farrell said the provincial government has been slow to act since the city declared a state of emergency in early February. She said further restrictions will not solve the problem of a lack of staff and resources on the ground to conduct testing, contact tracing and to connect people who have been recently released from jail with the isolation centres.
“We just don’t have the people to do that … We don’t see (a lockdown) as the only solution, we need the resources to deal with the outbreak,” she said.
The Neskantaga First Nation, about 430 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, also declared a state of emergency earlier this week. So far 12 members have been infected, with one on a ventilator in intensive care and another in hospital.
Irene Linklater, executive director of Nishnawbe Aski Legal Services, which helps Indigenous inmates in the north when they are released after serving a sentence, said a lack of housing has been a long-standing issue in the district, especially in First Nations communities.
This sometimes leaves people stranded in the city without adequate support services, where they end up experiencing homelessness and social and health issues, which puts them at greater risk of contracting COVID-19 and experiencing serious complications.
“Because of COVID they’re not able to go home immediately, like they would before … What we’re hoping to do here is to have a case management approach to provide our members that are being released with a social support system to help them in their safe travels back home to their community,” Linklater said.
“Hopefully this pandemic challenge will be met with positive outcomes in recognizing the social disparities that exist in the community.”