Beware highly contagious Delta variant, region's top physician cautions

The highly contagious Delta variant will become the dominant COVID -19 strain in Windsor-essex — and the best way to guard against it is vaccination, says the region's top doctor.

“This is our shot. This is our chance to prevent a fourth wave,” advised Dr. Wajid Ahmed, the region's medical officer of health, in his weekly epidemiological summary on Friday.

“We still have a long way to go (in vaccinations) — especially in the younger age group.”

Ahmed's words of warning came while noting a slight increase in the region's case rate this week, as well as negative movement in other COVID-19 metrics.

The Windsor-essex County Health Unit reported four new cases in the region on Friday morning.

Two are close contacts of previously reported cases, and two are the result of community transmission.

According to Ahmed's summary, roughly 50 per cent of all new cases in Windsor-essex since July have been acquired in the community.

Just as alarming to Ahmed is the plateauing of the region's vaccination rate.

The latest figures — with 75.7 per cent of all residents ages 12 and older having received one dose, and 66 per cent of all residents ages 12 and older being fully vaccinated — have not seen strong increase in recent weeks.

Ahmed pointed to how COVID-19 statistics have quickly changed course for the worse in the U.S. and the U.K. “The world has seen how efficiently the Delta variant can attack the unvaccinated,” he said.

“That's why it's absolutely critical that we must vaccinate a high number of people.”

Referencing the projections of the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table, Ahmed said Windsor-essex will need a vaccination rate of 90 per cent of the population with at least one dose to prevent the Delta variant from having a harmful impact on our region.

“It's inevitable that we will see the case count increase in our community if we do not improve our vaccination rate,” Ahmed warned.

All that said, in terms of sheer numbers, Windsor-essex has so far been relatively untouched by the Delta variant.

Three more local cases of the Delta variant were confirmed by the health unit in Friday's update — bringing the region's total of the Delta variant to 17 cases, on record.

That number pales in comparison to the spread of the Delta variant in other Ontario communities such as Waterloo, Hamilton and Durham.

Ahmed credited the Windsor-essex region's early start on vaccinations for sparing us the brunt of the Delta variant — for now.

“We were really leaders in rolling out the vaccine,” Ahmed said. “We had that head start, and didn't let the Delta variant have a foothold in the beginning.”