As new COVID-19 cases go up and down, Niagara’s top doc will discuss the future of living with the virus
Published October 13, 2022 at 11:04 am
There’s no real pattern when it comes to new daily COVID-19 cases in the Niagara Region. It seems to be a continuing cycle of bad days and less-bad days. Frankly, there haven’t been “good” days since the summer of 2021.
Looking at the pattern below of the past 28 days – September 15 to October 12 – it resembles a roller-coaster ride at Wonderland.
As well, at this point, there have been 619 deaths in Niagara after 46,703 cases in total since March 2020.
It has become apparent that the virus is here for the long haul – possibly something people will have to deal with over the next decade.
To that end, Niagara Region’s Acting Medical Officer of Health Dr. Mustafa Hirji will be giving a presentation on “COVID-19 and its Variants: Where we are now and could be in the years ahead?” on October 19 at 7:30 pm at the Niagara District Council of Women Zoom meeting.
Given his nearly three years of dealing with the virus in Niagara, Hirji will be explaining the nature of the epidemic, the work being done by health systems to counter it, and the actions the public should take to protect themselves and others from contacting COVID-19.
As he noted recently, “COVID -19 has settled in as Canada’s new third leading cause of death. Our society is now less healthy, less equal, less prosperous and with a health system that is less sustainable than before the epidemic.”
That said, he added, “However, there is a path for our society to do what it has done with past epidemic infections and adapt to become less susceptible to COVID-19… in the process become healthier, more equal and more prosperous.”
At the moment, there are 26 people are being treated in Niagara hospitals for COVID-19 with two in the ICU. This time last week, there were 21 in the hospital and none in the ICU.
To make matters worse, there are 96 Niagara Health workers off work due to the virus.
From September 15 to October 12, there’s no real pattern to new COVID-19 cases.