COVID-19 infections in Niagara grow at an alarming rate for the third day
If unchecked, the province could move Niagara back to a modified Stage 2, action medical officer of health says
There has been a spike in the count of Niagara’s daily COVID-19 infections for the third consecutive day.
Niagara Public Health reports 27 new cases Sunday after having reported 28 on Saturday and 25 on Friday.
That is a dramatic increase from the beginning of the week when public health reported seven new cases Tuesday and four on Monday.
“There is quite a bit more of COVID-19 going around,” said Dr. Mustafa Hirji, Niagara’s acting Medical Officer of Health.
“We have kind of caught up with some of the other areas in the province like Hamilton and Halton and even Brant county.
“We had been about two-anda-half times lower than those areas. We were worried that with so many cases quite close to us, it could spread here. Unfortunately, it looks like that is what has happened.”
The daily public health report said that there were a total of 154 active cases in Niagara Sunday. The Niagara Health System said that as of Nov. 1 at 11:30 a.m., there were four patients in the hospital.
Hirji has been warning that Niagara could return to a modified Stage 2 of economic reopening if the infection rate is not brought under control.
“The province makes that decision, and there is only so much we know about what their thinking is,” Hirji said. “They have said the threshold is for moving a region back into Stage 2 is a rate of about 17 or 18 cases a day or higher.
“In the last three days, we have exceeded that figure, so we will likely be on their radar to move back to Stage 2. It hasn’t happened yet — and we don’t know for sure if it will — but we are in that range if the numbers remain where they are.”
Of all the Niagara cases, 62.7 per cent have come from close contact, Public Health said. Another 26.7 per cent were acquired in the community with 7.6 per cent from travel. In 1.8
per cent of the cases, the exposure is unknown.
“One of the things I watch is how the transmission is occurring,” Hirji said. “Are they from known cases, or are they from the community? When it is from the community, it means we don’t know how they became infected.
“There is a glimmer of good news in that we have identified the source in 39 of the current cases. The source is unknown in 27.
“In the province overall, that number that they can link the infection back to a known source is about 50 per cent. In Niagara, we have been between 65 and 70 per cent, and we have set our target at 80 per cent.”
Hirji said the target will be hard to maintain if the daily numbers continue to grow.
“When that happens, we don’t have as much time to investigate every single case,” Hirji said. “We usually have in the order of 25 to 30 people working on contact tracing or outbreaks and they work 11hour days that start at 8:30 a.m. and finish at 7:30 p.m.
“We will, from time to time, also pull people from the call centre to help with contact tracing depending on the workload.”