While the downward trend of recent daily COVID-19 case counts in London, Ont., and Middlesex County may be a cause for celebration, the region’s top doctor says the local fight against the coronavirus pandemic is far from over.
According to the Middlesex-London Health Unit (MLHU), Jan. 15 marked the last time more than 100 cases were reported in a single-day increase for the region’s coronavirus case count.
Since then, daily increases have gradually trended downward, with medical officer of health Dr. Chris Mackie reporting that roughly 17 cases were reported in the region for Monday.
However, Mackie noted that this number was unconfirmed due to a scheduled outage of Ontario’s case and contact management system, leaving local health officials unable to finalize reporting data.
“We are walking along a path as thin as a razor and it would be very easy to fall in either direction in a way that would substantially increase our case counts,” Mackie told a media briefing hosted by the MLHU on Monday.
“The trend downwards is not a guarantee that we will continue to see downward movement in our numbers. We’re still at a rate of daily case counts across the province that are higher than the peak in wave one.”
Mackie says the regional trend is stable enough to say London and Middlesex County have passed a peak in the second wave of the pandemic, but that doesn’t rule out the threat of another peak.
“It was a very different situation last spring, when we were past the peak and summer was coming,” Mackie said.
“When summer is here and we’re seeing case counts decline, it’s a really good reason to believe that the cases will continue to decline. That’s the not the situation right now, we’re past the peak, but it’s the middle of winter.”
The medical officer of health noted that the U.K., Ireland and Denmark are among many places where coronavirus cases skyrocketed after public health measures were relaxed too early.
Mackie noted that a major positive story can be found in updates to the regional vaccine campaign.
On Monday, health officials began administering second doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for long-term care and retirement homes, Mackie said. The second dose rollout will follow roughly the same schedule as the first dose rollout.
“That means we’ll start with the Oneida Long Term Care Facility (on Monday), exactly three weeks after the first doses were given there.
Mackie added that a new shipment of vaccines also arrived in London on Monday.
He says he is almost certain the MLHU will be able to reach its goal of vaccinating all long-term care residents in the region within 21 days of receiving their first shot.
Elsewhere, vaccinations remain temporarily halted at the clinic set up at the Western Fair District Agriplex due to limited local stock and delivery delays. The paused vaccinations were set to resume on Friday, at the earliest.
Dr. Adam Dukelow, chief medical officer for London Health Sciences Centre, the local hospital network that helps run the clinic, said on Monday the pause on vaccinations will likely be extended.
“It depends on the amount of supply of vaccine that we receive,” Dukelow said.
“As Dr. Mackie mentioned, we received vaccine (on Monday) that’s being redeployed, but we don’t have a line of sight as to how much vaccine we’ll receive next week, which is the key aspect as to when that might be able to open up again.”
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