York Region sees more community spread
Public health statistics suggest there has been a clear shift in the ways people are contracting COVID-19 in York Region — from travel and close contact to community spread and institutional outbreaks.
At first, confirmed COVID-19 cases were primarily confined to those who travelled outside Canada and those who had close contact with the travellers.
While travel-related infections originally accounted for the majority of confirmed cases in York Region, patients are increasingly reported as having caught the virus in the community, such as gyms, seniors homes and hospitals.
So, what do these trends mean and how are they affecting our lives?
As of Monday, confirmed coronavirus cases acquired through “local transmission” had jumped from zero to 81 in less than a month, according to public health data.
Local transmission, widely known as “community spread,” means the infected individual has not travelled outside of Canada and had no close contact with any known cases. In other words, the individual was infected through unknown sources in the community.
While the first confirmed coronavirus case was reported in the region as early as Feb. 27, there had been no known infection from the community until early March, when the first local transmission case was confirmed by York Region Public Health. A Vaughan woman in her 60s tested positive for coronavirus after contracting it in the community on March 7.
Since then, the virus has started to spread fast across the community, and local transmission now accounts for17 per cent of all confirmed cases. There have been a total of 464 confirmed cases in the region, as of Monday.
The latest available data show that 184 are under investigation, 96 are listed as travel, 81 are blamed on community spread, 65 as close contact and 38 as institutional outbreak.
York Region has also seen an increase in institutional outbreaks and community clusters since late March.
Public health authorities have reported four outbreaks of COVID-19 in three long-term-care homes: Markhaven Home for Seniors and Yee Hong Ho Lai Oi Wan Centre in Markham, and Villa Leonardo Gambin in Woodbridge. There have been 38 cases of COVID-19 in these institutional outbreaks, resulting in seven deaths, as of Monday.
The deaths in the long-termcare homes have accounted for almost half of all COVID-19-related deaths in the region so far.
An institutional outbreak generally means the occurrence of at least two acute respiratory infections within 48 hours, with a common link such as sharing a unit or a floor in a facility, as it is defined by the Health Protection and Promotion Act. Facilities include long-term-care homes, retirement homes, group homes, child-care centres, hospitals or correctional facilities. Meanwhile, “community cluster” has become another way of contracting the virus in the region, which means a group of confirmed cases can be traced back to a single common source, such as a gym, grocery store or restaurant.
At the moment, at least three community clusters have occurred in the region: two gyms in Vaughan — Al Palladini Community Centre Gym and Body Barre Fitness and Training Studio — and the psychiatrist level of the Mackenzie Richmond Hill Hospital.
Cases jumped in one month, through gyms, hospitals, care homes