Health chief urges more people to get booster shots
Continuing outbreaks demonstrate how easily the BA.2 subvariant is transmitted
Niagara Health chief of staff Dr. Johan Viljoen says it will be at least a few more weeks before the number of COVID-19 patients and deaths start to decrease in Niagara.
Until then, he said “it’s just a question of holding on and doing the very best you can every day, and doing whatever we can to ensure that every unit and every emergency department is staffed to the best of our ability.”
“Just make it through day by day,” he said.
Niagara Health reported Thursday another patient from Niagara died while being treated for COVID-19, the eighth death reported this week and 20th this month. The hospital system had 84 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 Thursday, including five in intensive care.
Niagara Region Public Health increased the pandemic’s toll by five on Thursday, bringing the total lives lost in the region since the pandemic began to 542. The deaths included an individual in the 60 to 79 age group, and four who were 80 or older.
There were 99 known new cases reported Thursday, and 1,933 active infections.
Although many of the patients have been vaccinated, Viljoen said most suffered from underlying medical issues making them more susceptible to the virus.
“More often than not they have comorbidities — underlying medical issues that make them extremely vulnerable,” he said.
The overwhelming number of infections in the community is contributing to increasing hospitalizations and deaths as well.
“The thing with the BA.2 variant, although to some degree we could possibly say it’s not as severe a disease, it is so terribly transmissible. It gets around and it can infect large numbers of people in short periods of time,” Viljoen said.
“We know vaccination doesn’t protect one fully, but we also know vaccination reduces the risk of severe disease. And although the
percentage of the population who is vaccinated fully — which by definition is still two doses — is about 81 per cent, we also know the percentage of individuals who have taken advantage of the booster dose is around 50 per cent, which is not fantastic.”
If more people roll up their sleeves for a booster shot it “can serve us very well — to some degree in this wave — but certainly if another wave rolls around in the summer or early fall,” he said.
Viljoen also urged people 60 and older and up to sign up for a fourth dose of vaccine, because “there’s definitely way more benefit to be had from that than the opposite.”
“We’re still not very certain where this virus is going to take us.”
Meanwhile, another new outbreak was reported Thursday for a total 29 ongoing in the region.
Nine of those outbreaks are at hospitals, including five at the Niagara Falls site and two outbreaks each at Welland and St.
Catharines hospitals. That’s in addition to outbreaks at 16 longterm-care homes.
Viljoen said the continuing outbreaks demonstrate how easily the BA.2 subvariant is transmitted.
“We all live in the community. If you’re a health-care provider or a patient or a visitor, you come from the same community where this thing is running around rampantly. By some mechanism, it’s going to make its way into the hospital and it’s going to infect the patients and cause an outbreak,” he said. “This is predictable. We need to understand that it’s going to continue to happen.”
While Viljoen said he sounds like a “broken record,” he urged people to continue taking every measure they can to prevent the spread of infection.
“It’s the way we need to go about it — masking, distancing, vaccination, and if you know you’re sick, don’t go into work, get tested and self-isolate if you have to,” he said.