Niagara top 3 in virus death rate but not recognized as hot spot

Data shows region now ranks among province’s hardest hit communities

There is no avoiding what data shows about Niagara’s recent and grim experience with COVID-19. Having suffered its worst month of the pandemic — with historic levels of infections and novel coronavirus-related deaths — the region took its place on the list of Ontario’s hardest hit communities.

The local death rate rose to become the province’s thirdhighest, behind only Windsoressex

and Toronto, according to an analysis by the St. Catharines Standard of COVID-19 data of 16 of Ontario’s most impacted regions.

While Niagara has the sixthsmallest population of the regions examined by the Standard, Niagara has the sixthhighest total number of deaths. The region’s infection rate last week — the precursor to the deadliest seven days of the pandemic in Niagara to date — remains the third-highest in Ontario, behind Peel and Toronto.

Niagara’s pandemic ranking is the result of nearly two months of increases in local COVID-19 infections which unleashed explosive growth of cases in January,

a rapid expansion of outbreaks in long-term-care homes and eventually a death rate the region has not seen since the end of the Second World War.

However, the provincial government has not included Niagara as one of Ontario’s COVID-19 hot spots — largely GTA communities which receive more vaccine doses with which to combat the pandemic.

Despite urging from the public health department and the local hospital system, the government of Ontario Premier Doug Ford has not restored a shipment of 5,500 doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine that was diverted, without explanation, away from Niagara.

And asked why Niagara was not grouped with other Ontario COVID-19 hot spots, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health downplayed the severity of the region’s situation and to date has refused to discuss the Moderna shipment.

On Jan. 18, Dr. David Williams said Niagara’s COVID-19 situation had only begun to deteriorate in early January.

However, data shows Niagara’s COVID-19 infection rate, and pandemic-related death rate, began to accelerate in November. According to Niagara’s acting medical officer of health,

Dr. Mustafa Hirji, the region reached the breaking point about Dec. 5. It was about that date nearly all of Niagara’s COVID-19 metrics began to move even more rapidly in the wrong direction. Cases per 100,000 people, the rate of positive COVID-19 tests, the local viral reproductive number, deaths and cases rivalled communities identified as hot spots.

Hirji and health-care leaders from Niagara Health sounded the alarm. They showed provincial leaders the data and predicted, correctly, the region was on the cusp of a crisis. They were ignored.

Government critics, including Niagara Centre New Democrat MPP Jeff Burch, said the province isn’t listening because it doesn’t know what it is doing.

“They aren’t listening to the science,” Burch said. “And there isn’t much transparency. In my experience, when you see that kind of lack of transparency, it is usually the sign of incompetence and confusion.”

How Niagara got here

Niagara’s COVID-19 nightmare was not a foregone conclusion.

As summer turned to fall and the infection rate started to creep noticeably upward, Hirji warned the community repeatedly.

If the virus spread widely across Niagara, it would result in more serious illness, more pressure on local hospitals, long-term-care outbreaks and, eventually, more deaths.

Too few listened and the virus spread in bars, restaurants and at house parties. From those infections, the virus piggybacked on people into long-term-care homes.

A breakdown of Niagara’s month-by-month data of COVID-19 cases and related deaths show how prescient Hirji was. Cases climbed dramatically in December and January and deaths, which appear in the data as an echo of rising infection rates, soon followed.

Those two months saw 72 per cent of all of Niagara’s COVID-19 infections, and 72 per cent of all pandemic-related deaths.

Niagara, with a population that skews older than most of the province, is particularly vulnerable to the novel coronavirus. The region has a higher percentage of senior residents than the rest of Ontario — about 21 per cent here, compared to the Ontario average of 16 per cent, according to Statistics Canada.

Nearly 67 per cent of all COVID-19 related deaths in Niagara are of people aged 80 and up, most of them residents of longterm-care and retirement homes.

Health officials, aware of what the data was showing in early December, urged the province to move the region into the red zone of provincial COVID-19 restrictions. That would have placed further limits on economic and social activity — both key drivers of community spread of the virus — and provided for earlier and larger shipments of vaccines.

By the time the province acted and Niagara was moved into the red zone on Dec. 21, it was too late. The COVID-19 train was moving at breakneck speed, and it cannot be stopped on a dime. While other communities also in dire straits, including Toronto, Peel and Windsoressex, were targeted for vaccine rollouts early, Niagara would not receive its first doses until Jan. 13.

The resulting infection rate and death rate now rank Niagara with, or above, the areas of Ontario the provincial government has focused its vaccine

rollout on.

The unknown COVID-19 unknowns

Hirji said it appears Niagara’s infection rate peaked about Jan. 8 and over the past week and a half, the number of daily cases has been declining steadily, even as deaths continue to rise.

The public health department has given the first shots of the two-dose Pfizer vaccine to all long-term-care residents in Niagara who have not been infected to date, and the second round of injections starts Wednesday. As Niagara’s most vulnerable residents develop immunity to the virus, the death rate should start to slow down.

However, due to shortfalls in both Pfizer and Moderna shipments to Canada, Hirji is concerned Niagara could see fewer vaccine doses in the short term. Given the history of the province delivering vaccine shipments without explanation, he said Niagara could be shorted vaccine doses as shipments are moved to communities higher on the provincial priority list.