8 CASES IN MUSKOKA AMONG 72 REGION-WIDE, WITH HUNTSVILLE NEWEST HOT SPOT
Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com
SIMCOE-MUSKOKA — While there are “no” Omicron cases in Simcoe-Muskoka yet, will current vaccines stop them “if and when” they arrive?
“We don’t know,” says Dr. Charles Gardner.
“It’s still too early to tell,” he said when asked this afternoon.
His “best advice” is to keep wearing masks inside and outside — and this season is to further reduce your contacts everywhere and to go back to celebrating the holiday remotely.
The medical officer of health for the Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit (SMDHU) is more focused on rising cases in the region.
Including 72 today — 8 of them in Muskoka and 64 in Simcoe.
And 5 in one of his own new hot spots the Town of Huntsville.
That’s where he hesitantly closed Spruce Glen elementary school yesterday.
It’s the first time in the pandemic Gardner has had to close a school. The province is usually the one to do that.
Spruce Glen has 24 active cases in an outbreak declared Nov. 22 affecting half the classroom cohorts and making it difficult to operate, Gardner said.
Students are now back to learning online.
Gardner recommends all students be tested.
Huntsville high and Riverside elementary there also have single cases.
A recent earlier outbreak with 3 cases at Monck public school in Bracebridge has been declared over.
This as the 8 Muskoka cases revealed Thursday include:
- Bracebridge girl, 0-17, under investigation, reported Nov. 30, first episode Nov. 29
- Bracebridge woman, 18-34, under investigation, reported Nov. 30, first episode Nov. 29
- Bracebridge man, 35-44, under investigation, reported Nov. 30, first episode Nov. 29
- Huntsville girl, 0-17, under investigation, reported Nov. 30, first episode Nov. 29
- Huntsville girl, 0-17, under investigation, reported Nov. 30, first episode Nov. 29
- Huntsville boy, 0-17, outbreak, reported Nov. 30, first episode Nov. 29
- Huntsville woman, 45-64, under investigation, reported Nov. 30, first episode Nov. 29
- Huntsville woman, 45-64, close contact, reported Nov. 29, first episode Nov. 24
Huntsville and Wasaga Beach had the highest per capita number of cases in Simcoe-Muskoka last week at 160 cases per 100,000 population per week.
Barrie, the region’s case leader, only had 130 per 100,000 at the same time.
Across the region that number averaged out at 82 per 100,000.
Ontario right now is just 37 per 100,000.
Simcoe-Muskoka ranks eighth highest of 34 health units in Ontario for cases per 100,000: behind Timiskaming, Algoma, Sudbury, Windsor-Essex, Kingston-Frontenac, Haldimand and South-Western Ontario.
Gardner said he is “very concerned” about the current trajectory and that the region is in “full surge” with six weeks of increases now.
He said recent cases show the region with a “much higher number of cases” than in the GTA.
Particularly as it is also producing more cases some days than York and Peel regions and even Toronto, which only has more cases because its population is so much larger.
The per 100,000 rate in Toronto is only 22.
Recently this region has the second highest number of cases overall in Ontario.
In the critical age group of residents 18-34 who have the highest percentage of positivity, Simcoe-Muskoka’s rate is 5.7 per cent.
And the past two weeks Muskoka has topped Simcoe and the province at 5.2 per cent.
Gardner started his weekly media update noting there’ve been 15,711 cases to date nearing the end of two years since the pandemic began and the beginning of a third year.
That’s 505 cases more than a week ago, when he last spoke to the media.
Active cases are 610 compared to 522 last week.
Hospitalizations are up “a bit” with 33 people in hospital — 3 more than yesterday; 30 are from Simcoe and 3 from Muskoka; 6 are in ICU. They all range in age from their 20s to their 90s. And 18 of them are unvaccinated, 9 fully vaccinated and 6 partially vaccinated.
Of the 72 cases today, 31 are women and 41 men.
Particularly notable, said Gardner, is that 25 per cent of those cases were among children under age 12.
Also, 28 were unvaccinated, 21 fully vaccinated, 2 partially vaccinated and 18 were not eligible to vaccinated.
Meanwhile, vaccinations continue to go up with 88 per cent of those 12+ vaccinated once and 85 per cent 12+ twice.
Since last Friday 6,423 kids have been vaccinated, including 1,129 Tuesday.
The booster shot has been given to 29,612 adults older than 70.
As usual, his message was to continue getting the vaccines.
He said this week 82 per cent of available appointment have been booked; next week half the spots are filled.
Gardner added that outbreaks continue to be “very high” at 29 cases, which is about the same as it was at the height of the third wave. There are 20 at elementary schools, 1 at a private school and also Huntsville high.
Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital in Orillia has also just announced an outbreak in one of its units and has restricted visitors to the unit. And as of tomorrow further visitor restrictions elsewhere in the hospital will be instituted.
Gardner says there are no more plans, yet, for further restrictions, though he will soon issue another letter to businesses and municipalities in the coming days with further instructions on what to do and not do in December.
He said most of the new cases are among the unvaccinated — especially youth and young adults. And youths exposed in home where people are unvaccinated. Or they may have been exposed through multi-unit housing, in food premises, schools, child care centres and churches.
Gardner doesn’t expect, like last year, for Christmas vacations to be extended in to the new year. Though that’s a provincial decision.
The MOH was asked about a recent concern regarding a local movie theatre that said it was OK to remove your mask when seated.
That’s plain wrong, said Gardner. Masks must be worn indoors except when eating.
WEDNESDAY: COVID BY THE P.H.0. NUMBERS: … 64 CASES IN SIMCOE-MUSKOKA (57 YESTERDAY) … ONTARIO 780 AND 6 DEATHS (687-3) … TORONTO 96 (94), YORK 37 (30), PEEL 38 (60) … NORTH BAY-PARRY SOUND 2 (0) … PORCUPINE 0 (1) …
HEALTH UNIT HIGHLIGHTS:
- 15,711 cases to date
- 176 cases this week.
- 499 cases last week, which was 20% higher than the 415 cases reported for the week of Nov. 14.
- From December 22nd, 2020 onwards, there have been 984 confirmed COVID-19 cases among vaccinated individuals.
- 12 deaths in November, 5 each previous 2 months
- From Oct. 3 to Nov. 27th the rate of COVID-19 infection among the unvaccinated vaccine-eligible Simcoe Muskoka population is seven times higher than it is for fully vaccinated population and the rate of COVID-19 hospitalizations is 13 times higher.
- 4,008 Alpha variants of concern, 169 Gamma, 34 Beta, 2,606 Delta
- 947,971 vaccines have been administered
- 471,265 residents have received at least one vaccine, which represents 77% of the total population
- 88% of the population 12+ have had at least one vaccine
- 85% of youth 12 to 17 have had one vaccine
- 13% of children 5 to 11 years of age who have received at least one vaccine
IN OTHER COVID NEWS …
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NOV. 30 – To date, 11 per cent of 5-11 year-olds in Muskoka have received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. After one week of eligibility for this age group, Huntsville and Lake of Bays lag behind the rest of Muskoka at five per cent each. Muskoka Lakes, Bracebridge, and Gravenhurst are at 21, 16 and 12 per cent respectively.
December 2, 2021 @ 1:12 pm
The way our daily infection statistics are reported are quite correct, but can easily mislead readers into believing that fully-vaxxed people are almost as likely to test positive as unvaxxed or partially-vaxxed people.
This is completely untrue, of course, given the large numbers of our population that been vaccinated compared with the relatively small number who have not. Vaccine-hesitant people, reading these numbers, may be led to believe that vaccination provides little additional protection against the virus. This is untrue. We need to dig a bit deeper into these numbers to understand what they represent.
Let’s use a hypothetical group of 100 people as an example. (In this sample group, 80% are fully vaccinated, and 20% are unvaccinated.). Let’s assume that 5 unvaxxed and 5 vaxxed test positive on a given day. These numbers make it look like the vaccine provided no benefit to those fully vaxxed, right? Equal numbers infected, right?
Wrong! In our example, 5 of the 20 unvaxxed folks got sick, or 1 in 4. Of the fully-vaxxed folks, 5 also got sick, but—here is the important part—that is only 5 out of 80 in our example, which is 1 in 16.
So, although a glance at the raw numbers doesn’t make it obvious, this example actually shows the infection rate to be 4 times higher among the unvaxxed group than among those who have been vaccinated.
In actual fact, the unvaccinated in Ontario are roughly 10 times more likely to catch COVID, and around 25 times more likely to need hospitalization.
Our daily statistics, while numerically accurate, don’t provide the real picture of the risk reduction provided by the vaccine.