It was just a matter of time – Chatham-Kent Public Health has confirmed the municipality’s first case of a COVID variant.
Officials say the man in his 50s who recently arrived in Canada tested positive for a gene mutation through routine testing, and remains in federal quarantine.
“This is not a Chatham-Kent resident, they have arrived in Chatham-Kent, and were fulfilling their 14-day federal quarantine in the normal manner as required by law, and we test those people.”
Public Health is still waiting for test results to identify which strain of the variant the man has, but Dr. Colby suspects it may be either the British or South African variant, based on the genetic sequence.
“It is currently estimated that variants of concern are now approximately 5-10% of cases in Ontario and we expect to receive more of these cases,” Dr. Colby says. “The good news is that public health measures needed to control these new variants are no different.”
Dr. Colby says it’s not inevitable that the variants become the dominant strain, but will if they’re allowed to spread unchecked because they are more transmissible.
He says another piece of good news is that the disease severity does not appear worse in the variants than it does in what he calls the ‘garden variety’ COVID-19 strain.
