There’s a potential reopening on the horizon for London and Middlesex County after the Ontario government announced that the region, along with most others in the province, will move out of lockdown on Feb. 16.
Monday’s announcement comes as the region continues to see a downward trend in daily reporting of new COVID-19 cases.
The Feb. 16 date remains a tentative one for London and Middlesex County, as the province noted all final decisions related to lifting stay-at-home orders “will be subject to review of the trends in public health indicators at that time.”
Elsewhere, Hastings Prince Edward Public Health; Kingston, Frontenac and Lennox & Addington Public Health; and Renfrex County and District Health Unit will get a head start on reopening with their stay-at-home orders ending on Wednesday. These health units will also move into the Green-Prevent zone of Ontario’s colour-coded framework.
Toronto, Peel and York regions are scheduled to move out of lockdown on Feb. 22, and will most likely be placed in the Grey-Lockdown zone.
During a virtual briefing held after Monday’s announcement, London Mayor Ed Holder said he has not been informed of what zone in Ontario’s colour-coded framework the region will be placed into once the stay-at-home order is lifted.
“Although right now, we appear to be trending toward either the (Orange-Restrict) or the (Red-Control). At this point, more Orange,” Holder said.
While the mayor referred to the announcement as a reason for optimism, he says it won’t be “back to normal” once local stay-at-home orders are lifted.
“As we’ve seen before, things can change so quickly, especially when we don’t follow the public health guidelines. Absolutely critical that we do that in the coming weeks if we want to keep each other and our economy vibrant, healthy and recovered.”
Dr. Chris Mackie, the medical officer of health for the Middlesex-London Health Unit (MLHU), reiterated Holder’s message in regards to where the region could end up in Ontario’s colour-coded framework.
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“I did speak with the chief medical officer of health at lunch (on Monday) and we will speak again later in the week regarding where the community is moving to,” Mackie said.
“The decision on that is a decision of Cabinet, so it’s really about what the data is looking like.”
As for the latest local data, Mackie says it’s a “very good sign” to see cases continue to trend down.
“We’re now at the point where our numbers are low enough that there’s a lot of fluctuation day-to-day based on outbreaks that are where we’re testing large numbers of people, which is probably accounting for about a third of the cases over the last three or four days,” Mackie said.
“We really need to keep our eye on that seven-day moving average, and that does continue to move down… very much in parallels, but slightly lower, than the provincial average, per capita.”
The MLHU is also continuing to report a downward trend in deaths related to the virus, which Mackie credited, in part, to the success of the local vaccination campaign in long-term care and high-risk retirement homes.
The medical officer of health noted that MLHU will be about halfway through administering second doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for all residents at those homes by the end of Monday.
Coronavirus variants from the U.K., Brazil and South Africa were highlighted as “serious concerns” during Monday’s provincial announcement, with the Ontario government introducing an “emergency brake” mechanism with the aims of providing an extra layer of protection.
This would allow chief medical officer of health Dr. David Williams to enact immediate action if a health unit sees a spike in transmission and/or their hospitals become overwhelmed, and could potentially send a region straight into Grey-Lockdown.
Mackie said testing for variants in local cases continues to take place at the provincial level through Public Health Ontario and a number of partnering research labs. He also noted that universal testing for the variants is not yet available.
“We did get a study last week that reported on some prevalence testing, so some test sampling of COVID results that came out I believe Thursday of last week, and it showed that across the province around five and a half per cent were testing positive for variants of concern, but those were primarily in outbreak settings, so in the general community it was a much lower percentage,” Mackie added.
“All of that to say that as we move toward broader testing of all COVID samples, we’ll have a much better understanding of how many of the variants of concern (are present) and how much of a factor that’s playing in our current pandemic.”
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