Kingston-area adds 2 more COVID-19 cases; 11 now active

The Kingston, Ont., area continues to see an increase in novel coronavirus cases.

On Saturday afternoon, Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington Public Health reported two more cases after four were announced the previous day.

According to public health, a male and a female between the ages of 20-29 tested positive.

This comes after public health upgraded the region’s COVID-19 alert status from green to yellow after the four cases were linked to Queen’s University.

As previously reported, three women under the age of 20 and a man in his 40s tested positive on Friday.

The number of active cases in the region now stands at 11. The total number of cases is 128, with 117 resolved.

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Saturday morning marked the first day of the new assessment centre at the Beechgrove Complex at 51 Heakes Lane. This included a drive-thru option running from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

By mid-afternoon, over 500 people had received tests, with most of those being conducted through the drive-thru assessment centre on the property.

“We’ve been having waits of about 20 minutes through the day today,” said Elizabeth Bardon, the vice president of mission and strategy integration and support services for the Kingston Health Sciences Centre.

Over the last several weeks, people lined up outside of the Leon’s Centre assessment centre for several hours to get tested. One of the reasons that led to the excessive wait times was people were looking to get tested even though they didn’t have symptoms, according to Bardon.

“We had a lot of people coming with no symptoms at all, but maybe they were trying to be proactive. They were going to visit somebody over the weekend, or they were going to a family cottage, and they wanted to get a negative test before they went,” said Bardon.

On Thursday, Premier Doug Ford said that those without symptoms should stay away from the testing sites, with some exceptions. Essentially, those who believe they are asymptomatic who want reassurance they don’t have the virus will not have access to testing offered by the province.

The drive-thru assessment centre at the Beechgrove Complex is only scheduled to be operating this weekend, although that could change, according to Bardon.

“We’re trying it this weekend to see how it goes, and then we’ll assess as we go,” said Bardon.