Kingston U.K. COVID-19 variant likely spread to 4 other people in the region

The Kingston region most likely had a minimum of five cases of the U.K. coronavirus variant, Global News has learned.

According to Dr. Kieran Moore, medical officer of health for the region, he was alerted to a positive case of the B.1.1.7. variant, a more contagious and possibly more deadly strain of the virus, on Sunday. The health unit shared information about that news Monday.

But on Tuesday, Global News learned that testing for the variant takes “several weeks,” so the person who tested positive for the variant has already recovered from the virus. Moore would not give an exact timeframe for when the person tested positive for the virus, citing privacy issues.

“It takes time and there’s weeks delay before we would get that information,” Moore said.

Also, Moore said that four of the original case’s close contacts also tested positive for COVID-19. None of those people were tested for the variant, but he said it is safe to assume they, too, had the variant, saying they are being counted as four “probable cases” of the U.K. strain.

Nevertheless, Moore believes that the health unit was able to control the spread of those cases through fast contact-tracing and testing.

Tuesday the Kingston region reported two new cases of the virus. Active cases sit at 18.

Still, there have been no other variant tests in the region, and Moore said they will only send off a sample to Toronto if there is an epidemiological link to an outbreak or region affected by the new strain.

But, the health unit will be ramping up testing for COVID-19 locally, and has already asked anyone who has travelled outside the southeastern region, or who has received visitors from outside that region, to be tested even if they are asymptomatic.

“It’s just one extra component to our strategy to try to limit the spread of COVID and potentially variants of COVID in our community. So we’re going to try this strategy to try to find any additional cases in our community over the next several weeks,” he said.

Moore said that there are limits to how many variant tests are allowed as well. For long-term care outbreaks, only one or two samples will be sent off to Toronto for molecular testing for variants.

“We know at a provincial level there’s a small percentage of all tests that will be tested for variants because of the cost of it and the sophistication in the testing. You can’t do it on all samples,” Moore said.

As of Monday, Public Health Ontario says there are 34 confirmed cases of the B.1.1.7. variant in Ontario, but those do not include probable cases, like the four additional cases in Kingston.

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According to Moore, the person who tested positive for the variant in Kingston had travelled to the Simcoe Muskoka area and caught the virus in the community.

Moore said there was community spread in the area due to the deadly Roberta Place outbreak in the region, but that the Kingston resident did not catch the virus from any health-care setting.

“It was only because of an outbreak investigation elsewhere that the sample was actually tested for the variant,” he said.