The COVID-19 outbreak at a North Bay, Ont., apartment building has grown to 18 confirmed novel coronavirus variant cases.
Meanwhile, a total of 24 people in the Skyline Lancelot Apartment building have tested positive for COVID-19, the city’s chief medical officer confirmed to Global News.
The number of variant-involved cases could grow as the health unit is still waiting on genome sequencing results to confirm total variant cases. Testing is also still underway to determine the exact COVID-19 variant strain of the 18 cases.
“It does take quite a bit of time because they have to do the genomic sequencing. So we don’t have (confirmation of which specific variant) back yet. But as soon as we do, we certainly will release it,” Dr. Jim Chirico, North Bay Health Unit’s chief medical officer, said, adding it’s likely the B.1.1.7 variant, which was originally discovered in the U.K., or the N501Y.V2 variant, which was first discovered in South Africa.
Chirico said a person who lived in the building and travelled internationally initially tested positive for a COVID-19 variant on Feb. 2.
With a growing cluster of cases in the building, health unit staff wearing full personal protective equipment went door-to-door last weekend to inform the residents about the COVID-19 situation.
They tested roughly 110 people from the apartment building. Chirico said just shy of 90 of these tests came back negative.
When asked if there was any preliminary information about what caused the virus to spread so rampantly through the apartment building, Chirico said they are looking at everything — including whether it could have spread through the ventilation system.
“It’s all under investigation — we are looking at all possibilities, such as you mentioned, contact and droplets, as well as aerosolization. We’re working with the building owners. We’re also consulting Public Health Ontario environmental health specialists. Certainly, aerosolization is on the top of the list that we’re trying to eliminate or prove that maybe that is what happened, and it certainly is a primary focus of ours.”
A case was linked to a local school, which has been closed — and students and staff are being tested.
Local residents are very concerned about the spread of the variant.
“I have a daughter at the school. It’s making me very anxious. And it’s not a good feeling,” a man told Global News yesterday on the city’s main street.
Up until last Friday, North Bay had relatively few cases of COVID-19, which Chirico said helped them identify the apartment building outbreak.
“The number of cases that we had within the community, the entire outbreak was quite low in comparison to the rest of the province and we were able to then identify when there was that aberration … So we were able to act quickly and gave us the best opportunity to isolate and contain as best we can the individuals.”
North Bay’s case rate for the past seven days (Feb. 5 to 11) is 17.72 per 100,000. The case rate for seven days prior to that (Jan. 29 to Feb. 4) was only 4.62 per 100,000.
The Ontario government extended the stay-at-home order for the North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit until Feb 16.
Outdoor public skating rinks, toboggan hills and snowmobile trails remain closed to control the spread of the variant.