The Medical Officer of Health for the Northwestern Health Unit says our COVID-19 numbers aren’t declining enough for the region to ease restrictions.
“Overall, case numbers and rates are gradually worsening over the past month,” says Dr. Kit Young Hoon. “This is disappointing for the entire region as we are collectively under an Emergency Brake and Stay At Home Order, which is a very high level of public health restrictions.”
The region’s percent positivity rate has dropped to 1.05%, compared to 3.10% last week. Dr. Young Hoon says the figure needs to fall further for the provincial government to think about loosening restrictions or placing our region into a different level of the province’s COVID-19 Framework.
“If we think about the provincial framework, it puts in very strong public health measures at the Grey level or the Red level. That’s usually at about 40 cases per hundred thousand population per week. Currently, we’re about 60 cases per hundred thousand population a week.”
Dr. Young Hoon stresses everyone must follow the current public health restrictions and measures to get our cases down.
“It’s concerning because if we don’t see that decline, at this point, I’m not sure if the province will be willing to lift public health restrictions or to shift children back to in-person learning. That is problematic because this increase in cases is being driven by individuals not following the rules.”
As of Tuesday, May 4, there were 66 active cases of COVID-19 in the region.
Sixteen of the cases are in the Fort Frances area where a recent protest over restrictions took place.
