Having only recently introduced walk-in times at their Mass-Immunization Clinics, the Haliburton Kawartha Pine Ridge District Health Unit announces walk-in times at any time the clinics are open as of Feb. 7.
“Any age, any dose, any time of the day,” Medical Officer of Health Dr. Natalie Bocking announced at this week's media scrum.
That means instead of walk-in hours of 1 to 4:30 p.m., you can walk in any time between 10 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.
Beefing up the numbers of the vaccinated continues to be vital, Dr. Bocking said, because even though the Omicron wave just may have peaked, a decline may not necessarily follow.
In fact, she said, “we seem to have plateaued a little bit.”
Lab-confirmed tests show fewer case numbers, she allowed. But since strict criteria govern who can even get a lab test, this does not give an accurate over-all picture.
And positivity rate has hovered around 12% for about three weeks now.
However, the total number of outbreaks is down to 15 at this point, all in congregate residential settings (10 of them in long-term-care and retirement residences).
The relatively new criteria of waste-water viral signals cannot be taken as current news, since (a) the relatively rural region has only two monitoring sites and (b) data gathered takes seven days to analyze and report on.
Still, they can indicate broad trends. At this time, she said, Lindsay shows a case decline while Cobourg has plateaued (if not increased slightly).
“It's one piece of the puzzle when we look at the big picture of where we are heading.”
Looking at regional hospitalizations since Jan. 1, Dr. Bocking said there had been 50 new admissions, 12 admission to ICUs and 14 deaths.
Of hospitalizations, she said, 56% were either unvaccinated or partially vaccinated. Looking at ICU admissions, she added, fully 61% were not vaccinated.
“There continues to be very good emerging data, not just from Ontario but a number of jurisdictions in the United States and United Kingdom, that demonstrate the added protective benefit of a booster dose of COVID-19 vaccine,” Dr. Bocking stated.
“That continues to play a key role in helping blunt the impact of the Omicron variant on our health-care system.”
Of HKPR residents aged 18 and older, 67.5% now have booster shots. As for those aged 12 to 17, current National Advisory Committee on Immunization guidance recommends boosters only in cases where the child has health conditions that carry a high risk of severe illness or lives in a situation wit a higher risk of outbreaks and severe outcomes. In such cases, a booster is recommended six months after the second dose.
For those who wonder why fully vaccinated people continue to be hospitalized, Dr. Bocking recommends a look at a short film by the Eastern Ontario Health Unit (available at https://yout.be/wa4NAW9) about how numbers alone tell so little of the story – and how such risk factors as old age, obesity and chronic medical conditions may predispose even someone who is vaccinated to acquire a case of COVID-19.
But booster shots make these cases less severe, Dr. Bocking stressed.
“Every time we prevent someone from developing a severe infection from COVID-19 and being admitted to hospital, we are helping alleviate the pressure on our hospitals – to ensure other ongoing health-care needs are being met.”
Dr. Bocking shared current guidance on when someone who has had a case might best get that booster. Eligibility begins when the isolation period ends and symptoms have ceased, she said. But greater immune response will be triggered if that person can wait four to six weeks.
Among the pediatric population, she reported that 46.9% of those aged five to 11 have a first shot.
“We are working with our school-board partners to establish school-based clinics that will start the week of Feb. 14,” she said. “It is my understanding consent forms have been sent home by our partner school boards, and our teams will work closely with our school boards to determine which clinics will be rolling out.”
The hope is that these opportunities can be offered in communities where the uptake on pediatric COVID shots has been less than in others.
Questioned about the hostile attitude some parents are taking to the idea of setting up vaccination clinics in schools, Dr. Bocking stressed that any child who gets a shot will only do so with appropriate parental consent.
Dr. Bocking noted this week's lifting of some pandemic restrictions, and warned that the results will probably be an increase in transmission that could lead to more hospital admissions.
“People need to continue their individual commitment to keeping our communities healthy as best they can – continuing to wear masks in indoor public places, continuing to minimize social gatherings where we can and continuing to respect the other public-health restrictions and capacity limits the province has in place,” she urged.
“With the easing of restrictions, we anticipate an increase in infection we believe the hospital system will be able to accommodate – but we will need to keep a very close eye on this.”
Asked about comments from some medical authorities that, given the seemingly endless nature of the pandemic, risk assessment might have to be left in the hands of the public, Dr. Bocking said there probably is no absolute answer.
“I think COVID-19 is a type of virus that doesn't go away, and until we have a vaccine that is really 100% effective available globally, and we are not looking at COVID-19 going anywhere soon, we have learned a lot over the last two years about the type of public-health measures that are effective at slowing or preventing transmission,” she said.
Omicron has made us look at the risk and benefits of the incredibly restrictive measures that have been invoked. While these measures had a definite beneficial effect until recently, we have found there's very little that will absolutely stop the transmission of Omicron.
After two years, she added, the harms of these measures – such as isolation and depression – are becoming clearer. Add in the fact of repeated cycles of these restrictive measures, especially with their effects on the more vulnerable among us, and you have a challenge to public policy decisions.
