Health unit falling behind with virus contact tracing

The unrelenting onslaught of new COVID-19 cases in Windsor-essex has the local health unit unable to keep up with contact tracing and asking ill residents to tell their close contacts to self-isolate.

As of Monday afternoon, 528 positive cases were still awaiting outreach from the Windsor-essex County Health Unit. With another 136 new cases reported on Tuesday, the region's top doctor said the health unit will be “making some significant changes to address those issues” and call infected people “as quickly as possible.”

Although there is a new system in place to contact positive cases promptly with instructions to self-isolate and call 911 if they need emergency care, the hour-long interviews performed by public health unit staff to determine where a person may have contracted the disease and who they may have exposed are now happening days after a person tests positive.

With some residents waiting multiple days for a test, then two or three days for their test results, and several more days to hear from a public health nurse, their likely-infected close contacts are spreading COVID-19 to others without knowing it.

“Anyone who is showing symptoms, I think they should start isolating immediately,” as should their household contacts, said medical officer of health Dr. Wajid Ahmed. If you receive a positive test result, “that would be a good time to expand that isolation request” to anyone else you were in close contact with during the days before you began to quarantine.

If residents have been following public health guidelines that have been in place for weeks now, their close contacts should be limited to only members of their household, Ahmed said. That will result in “better containment” of the virus.

The challenge lies with those individuals who have many close contacts outside of their households.

“At this time, we're really trying to work on the containment strategy. We would like to focus more on catching these cases as soon as possible, rather than trying to trace back” cases where outreach from public health has been delayed.

The health unit still intends to connect with all close contacts of confirmed cases, both for local containment and for provincial data reporting, “but the priority would be on the more recent (cases) because of these delays.”

Anyone who has been tested for COVID-19 is required to self-isolate while awaiting their test results, which are available online.

Since the local positivity rate for COVID-19 tests has risen to more than four per cent, Ahmed said the likelihood of anyone with symptoms being positive for COVID-19 “is very high.”

Of the 136 new cases reported on Tuesday, 35 are related to outbreaks. Eight are household contacts of confirmed cases, two are close contacts of confirmed cases, and four are attributed to community spread. The causes of the remaining 87 cases are still under investigation by public health unit staff. There are 837 active cases in Windsor and Essex County. Fifty-three of them are in hospital, with 11 of those in intensive care.

In Windsor, there are 67 suspected cases of COVID-19 in hospital. Those individuals have symptoms of the virus but are awaiting test results. No additional COVID deaths were reported on Tuesday. To date, 91 local residents have died as a result of COVID-19.

For those who check local pandemic data on the health unit's website, wechu.org, several charts have been removed for the time-being as health unit staff work to update them for accuracy. With the high number of cases reported in recent weeks causing a delay in case management and contact tracing, the statistics displayed in those charts were outdated, officials said.

The removed charts showed how many farm workers and healthcare workers had tested positive, as well as a breakdown of how many cases were attributed to each source of transmission.

Two more farms — one in Leamington and one in Kingsville — have been added to the list of workplace outbreaks, one with “a number of cases,” and the other with a smaller amount that “may just be the start” of a larger outbreak, Ahmed said. The health unit did not have the number of cases associated with either outbreak confirmed.

Windsor-essex has 11 active workplace outbreaks. Three are farms in Leamington, and three are farms in Kingsville. Three others are manufacturing facilities in Windsor, Kingsville and Tecumseh. Also on the list are a health care and social assistance business in Lakeshore and a finance and insurance business in Leamington.

A new outbreak has been declared at La Chaumiere Retirement in Lakeshore, where one staff member has tested positive.

Eight long-term care and retirement homes in Windsor-essex have active outbreaks, including The Village at St. Clair, where 73 people have recently tested positive. According to the Schlegel Villages website, 48 residents and 25 staff have tested positive, but 10 of those cases are still under investigation by the health unit.

A new community outbreak has been declared at Assisted Living Southwestern Ontario. The health unit continues to monitor outbreaks at Manor Lodge House and Victoria Manor.

Although all elementary and secondary students have switched to online and remote learning this week, outbreaks at General Brock elementary school and Corpus Christi Catholic Middle School's Central Park Athletics Campus remain active.

Hotel-dieu Grace Healthcare continues to deal with an outbreak at its Prince Road facility. As of Monday afternoon, 36 health-care workers and 18 staff have tested positive.

The health unit is investigating a small cluster of COVID-19 cases among staff at Windsor Regional Hospital's Met Campus, but so far they have found no evidence of transmission from staff to patients. No outbreak has been declared.