Dr. Kieran Moore, medical officer of health for the Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington (KFL&A) region, gave an update Thursday about the area’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout, possible variants of concerns and the likelihood of further lockdowns.
Moore said as of Thursday, about 70 per cent of the region’s long-term care and high-risk retirement home residents have received the first dose of their vaccine, which equates to about 1,200 residents.
About 800 others in the region — health-care workers and primary caregivers — have also received the vaccine.
Due to delays in vaccine deliveries, Moore said Kingston would not be meeting the goal of Feb. 5 to get all long-term care residents vaccinated. He also said that the Kingston region has been lower on Ontario’s priority list for vaccines due to its low case rates.
“I think the government realizes that we didn’t receive adequate supply and they’re actively trying to redistribute from areas that potentially in Ontario that have extra vaccine and give it to those that don’t,” Moore said.
Despite delays, Moore says he’s still optimistic to start immunizing the general public as soon as April. Depending on supply, Moore says that the region’s health officials are gearing up to vaccinate as many as 10,000 people a day.
“If we have enough vaccine and we are working with all partners to ensure that we make the vaccine accessible, available and follow the government priority list as as we will be informed once Cabinet approves it,” Moore said.
Moore said the health unit is starting to rent arenas and facilities that will be used for mass-vaccinations clinic March 1, where they will be doing “dry-runs” to prepare for April.
Variants of concern
Over the month of February, all COVID-19 swabs taken by health units in Ontario will be then tested for variants of concern, according to Moore.
“Within 48 hours, they’ll be able to tell us if if that COVID positive test was actually a variant of concern,” Moore said.
He said this will be essential to understanding just how ubiquitous the new variants are in the province, and what kind of measures health officials will have to take to tackle the variants.
“We’ve been informed around 106 cases in the entire province have tested positive for variance with only one being the South African strain,” he said.
So far, the KFL&A region has only had one positive case of the B.1.1.7. variant, first identified in the U.K. Global News previously learned that cases most likely infected at least four other people in the region, but Moore still maintains the health unit was able to limit the spread of the variant locally.
He said as of Thursday, there have yet to be any other variants identified in the region.
“We’ve sent at least five tests away prior to the Feb. 3, and since Feb. 3, we’ve had no positives either,” he said.
Lockdowns
Ontario’s state of emergency is meant to end Feb. 11, but the province’s chief medical officer of health said that Ontario must hit below 1,000 cases a day to lift lockdown measures.
Nevertheless, the Kingston region, along with all of southeastern Ontario, has had low case counts for several weeks, with Kingston at 13 active cases, the Hasting and Prince Edward regions with three active cases and the Leeds, Grenville and Lanark region has 24 cases as of Thursday.
Moore says it’s still unclear if the province will decide to further lockdown measures past Feb. 11, but that he’s hoping cabinet will consider a regional approach.
“Belleville, Brockville, Kingston, given our very low rates and risk of disease, that in our very good public health capacity and laboratory system capacity to respond to COVID-19 and limit spread, they may make a decision to allow our economy locally to open up,” he said.
Moore says the health unit has been hearing from the community and business about their hopes to reopen.
“I think our rates warrant a review of opening our local economy,” he said.
He believes the province should be making an announcement about the state of emergency Monday.