Niagara making ‘fragile progress’
Infection rate drops but region suffers another pandemic death
Niagara has made “fragile progress” in tamping the local COVID-19 infection rate, says Niagara’s top public health official, who says if the trend keeps going, Niagara will avoid the pandemic restrictions hitting other communities.
Dr. Mustafa Hirji, Niagara’s acting medical officer of health, pointed to some key indicators that over the past six days show the region can get a grip on the fall wave of the novel coronavirus and prevent it from spinning out of control.
“Last week I talked about how I saw some glimmers of hope in the data, and this week that has opened up a bit more,” Hirji said. “But this is fragile progress. We must be very aware this can turn around quickly, and the situation is worse in regions neighbouring us. This is why we have to keep doing the right things. It is going to take a few more weeks to bring these numbers back down to a low level.”
Among the metrics that is giving some renewed coverage is the drop in the local reproductive rate of the novel coronavirus in Niagara.
That number reflects how many people an infected person can make sick. The lower the number, the less the virus is spreading in a community.
The local public health department says a value of less than 1 is ideal. But by the end of September, the reproductive number was around 2.31, at a time when the daily case count leaped from around 1 or 2 a day into the double digits.
For the last six days that number has been less than one and was at 0.1 on Friday.
Hirji also points to several community outbreaks ending and two long-term care and retirement homes — Lundy Manor in Niagara Falls and Ina Grafton Gage in St. Catharines — emerging from outbreaks this week.
Patrick O’neill, executive director of Ina Grafton, said a personal support worker had tested positive on Oct. 7, although she had not been at the facility since Oct. 2. But because she had contact with six residents, they were placed in isolation while outbreak measures were put in place, including more stringent cleaning, limits on visitors and other measures.
“Those six people have not shown symptoms,” O’neill said Friday, the day the public health cleared the home. “But it is scary for people when an outbreak is declared. Those six residents have been in their rooms for a long time.
“Things are difficult, but it is not as bad as it was in the spring.”
Ina Grafton managed a spring wave outbreak and was the home of Niagara’s first known COVID-19 patient — a man who also became the region’s first pandemic related death.
Niagara’s COVID-19 picture is not all positive, however. Of the two long-term-care homes in Niagara Falls currently dealing with outbreaks, Millennium Trail Manor is a potential trouble spot.
Hirji would not release specifics other than to say there are resident cases in the home, where an outbreak was declared on Sept. 29. Outbreaks are declared ended if a home goes two weeks without a new case. When a new infection is confirmed, the countdown clock restarts. That Millennium remains in outbreak status means new cases have emerged more recently.
A representative of Millennium did not respond an interview request Friday.
Niagara also saw its 67th COVID-19 related death Friday — the second death this week. Hirji would only say the person was elderly.
Three Niagara residents, all elderly, with the virus have died since the second wave began and none of them died in hospital.
However, Hirji would not say if they were residents of longterm-care homes.
“I am not willing to do that yet because of the low numbers,” he said, citing privacy protections. “If we see a few more I may be able to bundle them together and comment.”