An update on the COVID-19 situation at STEGH

St. Thomas, Ont. -

The positive COVID-19 cases over the weekend in the Southwestern Public Health region continue to rise.

Sixty-Six new infections were announced over the past two days and St. Thomas Elgin General Hospital is still over capacity in its Intensive Care Unit.

According to the Southwestern Public Health Unit (SWPH), of the 66 positive cases over the weekend, the majority are coming from household contacts and untraced community spread.

That makes it difficult for the health unit to determine how to deal with the rising count.

The majority of positive cases are coming from the East end of Elgin County.

"We can't always cut the pie by separating vaccinated from unvaccinated and we can always cut the pie separating one municipality from another because this virus just goes where people go and as long as we're traveling to and fro, the virus will travel to a fro,” said Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Joyce Locke.

It’s tough to determine how to proceed with any potential limitations. Many places require a vaccine passport, meaning patrons are double-vaccinated. However they could still end up with capacity limitations due to unvaccinated children.

"We tend to go places as families. So we may have mom and dad who are vaccinated, but the two children or more that go with them or not... so it's only in the places that you don't need it that we're going to have the intervention,” said Locke.

The unvaccinated are filling the ICU at St. Thomas Elgin General Hospital. Of their dozen COVID patients, all of them are unvaccinated. With a full ICU, they had to transport two 'level three' patients to London.

“I will I could tell you it’s improved. It has not, we are well over 100 per cent capacity despite adding additional beds,” said Karen Davies, president and CEO at St. Thomas Elgin General Hospital.

Ryan Imgrund is a biostatistician who tracks provincial cases. He says in SWPH, the numbers are across all age groups, which makes it difficult to contain. He does have one possible solution, especially considering the double-digit cases in Elgin County schools.

“Now would be the time that you really want to have a really, really strong rapid testing program. If any school starts to show one single case, you should implement that whole test to stay strategy, something which we talked about at the Ontario level, but we haven't really seen any public health unit, get ahead and actually implement that,” said Imgrund.

Lock says with more people moving indoors and the holidays coming, now is the time to reiterate not giving up on good hygiene, wearing a mask and staying six feet apart.