Just as many local residents were getting comfortable with looser COVID restrictions, a stark prediction from Chatham-Kent’s top doctor.
Chief Medical Officer Dr. David Colby says given the steady increase in new cases over the last week or so, he’s worried we may be headed back into the Red zone of Ontario’s reopening framework.
“The large number of cases that happened yesterday, they’re all from traceable indoor gatherings that people are not supposed ;to be having right now. This blip, if it is a blip as opposed to a pattern consistent with a third wave, it will be noticed by Ontario, and we’ll see what level we’ll end up in.”
Dr. Colby says Chatham-Kent could be at risk of going as far back as Grey-Lockdown.
Red would mean social gatherings limited to your own household and only 10 people allowed to eat indoors at restaurants, among other restrictions.
Dr. Colby pins most of the blame on people taking part in indoor social gatherings, against the advice of public health, with special frustration for those who have been refusing to help with contact tracing.
“People have been less than cooperative with my investigators that are taking all the positives and identifying their contacts, and getting them isolated and tested,” Dr. Colby says. “We’ve had less than full cooperation and that is an understatement, let me tell you.”
One bright side is that the variants of concern that are spreading like wildfire in other regions aren’t an issue in Chatham-Kent…yet.