So far so good for Chatham-Kent in the fight against COVID-19.
For the second day in a row, Chatham-Kent’s total case load currently stands at 25, with 11 patients recovered.
C-K’s Medical Officer of Health says he believes the low case load is a combination of local efforts.
“I have to say it’s a combination of luck and design. We are very aggressive at searching out and isolating anybody that’s positive,” says Colby in a recent media conference call. “The more cases you have, the more strained your health unit becomes.”
Colby says we haven’t had that issue in Chatham-Kent and hope to continue the trend.
“Health units that are flooded with large numbers of cases may not have enough personnel to adequately search out all of the contacts and get them isolated – which is a fundamental way of dealing with this,” adds the Doctor.
C-K’s top doc also believes despite our proximity, Chatham-Kent benefits from not having active borders unlike near-by Sarnia-Port Huron or Windsor-Detroit where the case load is much higher.
“We don’t have active borders here in Chatham-Kent. You can get to the United States fairly rapidly, but compared to the local borders cities between Sarnia and Port Huron and Windsor and Detroit we do’t have anywhere near that kind of traffic. The number of people who are working in those border cities on the other side of the border is very, very large, which I think has really caused their numbers to skyrocket compared to ours,” offers Colby.
Colby also points out that most of the initial COVID-19 cases in Chatham-Kent were initially connected to travel. As of late, the very strong majority have been close contacts of patients who have already surfaced.
“When we had our recent jump, all of those cases had already been identified and isolated as probably cases. Their tests came back positive and we were expecting that.”
Colby says he remains cautiously optimistic and urges C-K residents to continue their efforts of social and physical distancing.
