Record-smashing COVID case surges, coupled with a concurrent mass immunization campaign, continues to strain the region’s health unit capacity, and could soon mean less-specific case reporting.
On Jan. 10, the health unit reported 1,176 new COVID cases in the region captured through PCR testing of eligible groups since Friday.
Sometime soon, the Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit will likely stop reporting the breakdown of cases by municipality, according to the region's medical officer of health, Dr. Charles Gardner.
“We will not have the same degree of data about the cases that we’ve had all the way through the pandemic and will not be able to report, in the near future, on the geographic distribution of our cases,” said Gardner during his weekly briefing on Jan. 5.
If this occurs, the daily update will no longer indicate how many new cases are in Barrie, Collingwood, etc. In fact, case reports may not even indicate whether the person is from Simcoe County or Muskoka.
“I really cannot guarantee that we’d be able to do that accurately,” said Gardner.
In his final media briefing of 2021, Gardner also noted the health unit would not be tracking school cases as it once did.
Once students return to in-person learning, there is no longer a provincial requirement to list all cases associated with a school.
“We won’t have detailed data about school cases and school outbreaks,” said Gardner, prior to the provincial announcement declaring two weeks of virtual learning.
Gardner said students and teachers should screen themselves every day for symptoms and stay home if they feel ill or have symptoms. They can take a rapid test if possible, as a positive result on a rapid test is good enough to confirm COVID-19. A negative test should be confirmed with a second rapid test within 24 to 48 hours.
Minimum isolation requirements for those who test positive for COVID-19 indicate five days for a fully vaccinated person and ten days for an unvaccinated person.
Those who are eligible for a publicly-funded PCR test (high-risk groups and those who work with them) may have to wait a while for results as the provincial labs continue to operate at or near capacity and the health unit is stretched to follow up with cases.
According to the Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit less than 50 per cent of test results are returned within a day of testing and more than one-quarter of results take longer than two days to come back.
The health unit does not follow up with close contacts of many of the positive cases, and has also stopped posting how many local cases get a follow-up call within one day of the results being reported to the health unit.
Since the surge in cases began, the health unit has also stopped reporting specific transmission details such as whether the person’s case is linked to close contact with another known case, or whether it was acquired in the community without a known link. Instead, cases are reported as outbreak-related or sporadic.
About 25 per cent of all people who get a PCR test from Simcoe Muskoka have been testing positive over the past week, which indicates high transmission rates that are not captured by testing. The health unit’s goal for per cent positivity is one per cent or less to ensure enough testing to capture local transmission.
