The head of the Chatham-Kent Health alliance says the decreasing demand for COVID tests is a very positive step.
It’s been one week since the COVID assessment centre moved from the St Clair College Healthplex to a storefront at 10 Grand Avenue West in Chatham.
“That will be its home for the next several months,” CKHA CEO Lori Marshall says. “I would hope that eventually, over the course of this year, what will happen with swabbing is it will just become part of regular operations either at the hospital or at your doctor’s office, that it will be something that we won’t need to do in such a mass way in the future.”
At the peak of the pandemic in Chatham-Kent, the assessment centre was performing roughly 250 swabs a day.
“Our normal leading up to that and when things started to come back down was in that 100-120 and now I think we’re more in the 70-80 range at this stage.”
The dip in testing coincides with a decline in active cases and a rise in vaccination rates across the municipality. As of Wednesday, July 7th, there were seven active cases in Chatham-Kent.
46% of youth 12-17 have received their first dose. In the adult population 18+, 74% have had one shot, while 47% are fully vaccinated.
Marshall says the declining case and swab numbers are a sign of hope for the community.
