Thousands of Niagara residents calling COVID-19 hotline
A coronavirus hotline set up by Niagara Region Public Health has fielded 5,300 calls in its first 10 days.
Another 500 contacts were made through a live online chat service launched last week.
Niagara’s acting medical officer of health, Dr. Mustafa Hirji, said the calls have come from people who feel sick and others wanting information.
“Many of them are people calling concerned that they have symptoms. Some people are just looking for advice if they’ve travelled and want to know what their risk could be and what to look out for, that sort of thing,” he said Sunday.
Niagara’s confirmed cases of COVID-19 remained at four on Sunday and all were travel-related.
Across the province, there were five deaths, 412 confirmed positive cases and more than 8,360 cases under investigation as of late Sunday afternoon.
Hirji said the province has asked public health not to release local testing numbers.
The Niagara Health hospital system said it saw 68 patients at the St. Catharines COVID-19 assessment centre over the weekend and 65 at the Niagara Falls centre.
Hirji said with the huge demand in testing, the ability of labs to manage and the global shortage of swabs for testing, health officials have had to prioritize who gets tested based on who’s most likely to have the infection or if there is a particular need to know, such as the risk of serious complications.
Based on the provincial numbers, he said about 1.5 per cent of people tested have positive results.
Hirji said one of the most important things people can be doing right now to reduce the spread of COVID-19 is limit travel and stay home for 14 days if they are returning from March break.
He said statistics in Ontario show more than 90 per cent of positive cases are linked to travel, while nationally it’s at least 75 per cent.
“Travel really is the primary driver right now for this. If the number of travel-related cases of course keep growing, that’s going to basically overwhelm the ability of public health to continue containing this,” he said.
While Niagara’s cases have been travel-related, other communities in the GTA have seen local transmission.
The local public health novel coronavirus info line has nurses who can answer questions and operates weekdays 9:15 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday 9:15 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. It’s 905-688-8248 ext. 7019 or tollfree at 1-888-505-6074. The online chat option can be accessed at niagararegion.ca/ health.