The medical officer of health in Chatham-Kent is still concerned about a few COVID-19 trends even though most pandemic restrictions have or will soon be lifted in Ontario after a sharp drop in new cases since January.
In a COVID-19 update to the Chatham-Kent Board of Health on Wednesday, Dr. David Colby said he's worried about the number of COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations going up across the province even though the number of COVID-19 patients in the ICU is going down. Dr.Colby said the number of COVID-19 deaths in Ontario has increased by 30 per cent over the past week but he's not sure why or what it means.
Colby is also worried there wasn't enough time to study and measure the affects of relaxing gathering limits and physical distancing before capacity limits were lifted altogether. Colby also said Chatham-Kent is doing better even though new cases continue.
The doctor noted there is a significant COVID-19 decrease present in sewage Ontario-wide, but the data is mainly from urban areas because information on septic tanks is not included in the data. He said COVID-19 found in sewage in southwestern Ontario is low overall.
On the vaccination front, Dr. Colby emphasized once again that currently three doses are needed with the Omicron variant for someone to be considered fully vaccinated. He also said a requirement for a fourth shot is coming soon for the general population with a new highly transmissible variant called BA.2, also known as the "stealth subvariant", driving new cases and eventually becoming the dominant variant. Dr. Colby said a booster appears to be effective against the BA.2 variant but more evidence and data are needed.
Colby repeated the pandemic is not over yet even though people are tired of it. He reported only 2,500 COVID-19 vaccines administered in Chatham-Kent over the past month, citing that number was easily administered daily back when vaccination was popular. Colby expects the local vaccination rate to increase soon now that intervals between doses for some younger age groups are coming to an end.
"We're not going to wait for the light to appear at the end of the tunnel, we're going to walk down there and illuminate it ourselves," said Colby.
He also mentioned the flu shot can be taken at the same time as the COVID-19 shot.
Chatham-Kent has had a total of 58 deaths and 7,089 cases since the pandemic started.
Currently, there are five COVID-19 patients in the hospital and four active outbreaks. Two of the larger outbreaks are at retirement homes because the focus on testing has been congregate living. Wallaceburg Retirement Residence has 26 cases and Maple City Retirement Residence in Chatham has 16 cases as of Wednesday.
Ontario reported 16 new COVID-19 deaths on Wednesday and 2,011 new cases.
