Public health trying to manage other programs during COVID-19 crisis
No new Niagara COVID-19 cases announced Monday
In an ideal situation, during a pandemic a public health department could focus all of its energy on tracking and limiting the spread of the deadly virus.
But the reality of COVID-19 is anything but ideal, and while the novel coronavirus is at the top of the Niagara health department’s agenda, it is not the only disease it has to manage.
“There are a number of important programs that we have to, in as much as possible, keep working, like our vaccination programs,” said Dr. Musftafa Hirji, the region’s acting medical officer of health.
“The last thing we want during a COVID-19 pandemic is a measles outbreak.”
Hirji said the scope of the current crisis is consuming much of the public health department’s resources. Its COVID-19 hotline now takes some 900 calls a day, with another 300 people reaching out online through live chats. Staff have been redeployed to deal with the call volume and some retirees have returned to work to help out.
Some programs have been effectively suspended while others are operating with vastly limited resources.
“Much of the work in those programs has been reduced,” he said. “But despite the pandemic, we have to keep them going if we can.”
This includes support for pregnant woman, new mothers and dental care programs, he said, as these are programs that elevate the general health of the community.
The department’s vaccination program has not just been impacted by redeployment of staff but by the closure of schools, where public health has vaccination clinics.
There have been localized outbreaks in the past few years of diseases such as whooping cough in some communities where “herd immunity” — a situation through which most people are immunized against a disease, which prevents it from spreading — was lost due to low vaccination rates.
An outbreak of whooping cough or measles during the pandemic would be devastating.
As new COVID-19 cases are confirmed, the health department is called upon to investigate where and potentially from whom a patient contracted the virus.
It is a labour-intensive process that, so far, the health department has only had to do a few times in a region with only four confirmed cases.
Those investigations revealed Niagara’s first and fourth cases were linked. The first case, an 84-year-old resident of Ina Grafton Gage in St. Catharines, was the result of him coming into contact with a family member who had been to Europe. The 84-year-old is being treated at the St. Catharines hospital, and his family member, a 58-year-old man, the fourth case, is in isolation.
The health department is tracking down anyone else who came into contact with the 58year-old.
The second case was a 55year-old woman who had been to Egypt. She and a family member are in isolation. And the third case is a 47-year-old who contracted the virus while on a business trip to Europe. He is in isolation with his family.
There were no new confirmed cases announced Monday.
Niagara’s two COVID-19 assessment centres, near St. Catharines hospital and Greater Niagara General Hospital in Niagara Falls, saw 156 patients Monday, down from 226 who arrived the day before.
Patients can only go to the centres upon referral by the public health department.