THUNDER BAY - Even with the number of daily COVID-19 cases in the Thunder Bay District going down in recent days, medical officer of health, Dr. Janet DeMille, says the next two weeks will be critical in determining whether or not that trend continues.
“The third wave, essentially what it is, the increase in case numbers in various areas of the province, and of course variants of concern, which are increasing in terms of the percentage of cases and we know those are more infectious and potentially cause more severe illness,” DeMille said.
“We still don’t have significant levels of variants of concern here but we know we are impacted by what else happens in the province. The next couple of weeks will be quite revealing in terms of what happens provincially and locally.”
In Ontario, 1,571 new cases were reported on Wednesday and the seven-day average sits at more than 1,600 new daily cases, up from 1,099 at the beginning of the month.
The Thunder Bay District Health Unit reported 25 new cases on Wednesday and the total number of active cases fell to 286.
Unfortunately, the district also reported five more deaths related to the virus in a 24-hour period, the single highest loss of life in a single day since the pandemic began.
DeMille said it was unfortunate and discouraging to see five people lose their lives due to COVID-19 though given the high number of cases and hospitalizations in recent weeks, it is not to be unexpected.
“I think it reflects that this is a serious infection, this is a serious pandemic, and has many impacts on us as individuals, families, communities, businesses, schools, everything,” she said. “These are very serious implications.”
In order to try to keep the daily case count down, the health unit announced that most school boards in the district will continue virtual at-home learning until April 19.
According to DeMille, that decision was based on the high number of cases still in the community, including a high number of school age children testing positive.
“If these children were going to school, that would result in management of school related cases, the risk to schools and others. There’s a public health risk,” she said.
“It was really driven by the numbers and what’s happening in the community, recognizing that that impacts schools and the extension does cover over the Easter weekend and the spring break. It gives time for our numbers to continue to go down to safer levels.”
The Thunder Bay Christian School was permitted by the health unit to return to in-person learning this week. According to DeMille, this was due to enhanced safety measures put in place, having a large facility to allow for physical distancing, and difficulties for some families to access virtual learning.
The health unit also continues to screen for variants of concern and there are currently two known variant cases in the district.
But given the rise of variants in other parts of the province, as well as the high number of cases, the district will remain under a grey lockdown into next week.
“We are still fairly high above that threshold to go into red,” DeMille said. “If we can continue to hold our own and the numbers continue to drop, that might be something we will be looking into for sure.”
