Stay home and halt the spread
‘Hard lockdown’ can help cut down rising number of cases, Salvaterra says
There needs to be “a hard lockdown” after Peterborough’s worst week yet for new cases of COVID-19, said the medical officer of health.
“We need everyone, over these next two weeks, to stay home and avoid contact with others as much as possible,” said Dr. Rosana Salvaterra at a virtual pandemic press briefing on Friday. “If we can make this a hard lockdown now, we can prevent this third wave from prolonging its negative effects on our social and mental health, and on our livelihood.”
Salvaterra said she wants to see this lockdown look more like the one in spring 2020, when “we emptied the streets and sheltered at home.”
“We need to do that one more time – and we need it now.”
Early in the day, there was a record 421 high-risk contacts of people with COVID. “We’ve never had as many cases, or high-risk contacts,” Salvaterra said. “Because of the variants of concern, I think the risk for transmission in our community has never been greater.”
“We were hoping that the April 8 stay-home order was going to help modulate this wave, and bring it down – but we’re not seeing that happening. So this is concerning, a week later, that the numbers are just going up and not down. I think everyone will breathe a sigh of relief when we see those going down,” she said.
Board of health chair Andy Mitchell, who is also the mayor of Selwyn Township, was at the briefing and called it “an unprecedented health emergency.” But Peterborough-Kawartha MPP Dave Smith said the situation can still improve soon.
“It isn’t all dire news: we can make the best of this,” he said, adding that people need to “take public health measures to heart.”
Mayor Diane Therrien said she understands that people are weary after more than a year in a pandemic. “We all need to do our parts in caring for the community — we’re all tired and we’re all frustrated, but we’re getting there.”