COVID cases concentrated in urban areas in KFL&A

Jeff Green | Sep 22, 2021

During a COVID media briefing last week, interim Medical Officer of Health for KFL&A (KFLAPH), Dr. Hugh Guan, said that while cases have been on the increase in the region throughout the month of September, there are no hospitalisations and the case numbers “have been stabilising”.

The case rate at the time of the briefing (September 16) was 45 and it then dropped to 31 by Monday (September 20). On September 16, KFL&A was in the yellow zone in the former provincial colour coded system that KFLAPH is still using as a reference tool, but with 9.4 cases per 100,000 people, and a positive test rate of 0.71%, the region was back in the Green zone by early this week.

And the cases have been concentrated in urban areas of KFLAPH since the beginning of September.

Kingston, which accounts for 60% of the population of KFL&A, has had 84% of the cases in September, 52 of the 62 cases. And of the 10 cases that are identified with non-Kingston residents, 4 are in Loyalist Township, part of which is a suburb of Kingston, and 5 are in Napanee, the second urban centre in the region.

There has been only 1 positive case in Frontenac County, in South Frontenac, which was reported on September 12.

Dr. Guan said that the case load throughout the pandemic has been higher in urban centres.

“The population is obviously denser in population centres and they will have more cases. It is also easier to socia isolatel in rural areas as opposed to urban settings. We have noted that the 4th wave has been more prevalent in Kingston, and it is not even throughout Kingston, but in pockets,” he said.

Dr. Guan also said that part of the reason for increased case numbers in September was the concerted effort by KFLAPH to do contact tracing for all new cases.

“By doing the contact tracing, and getting community buy-in, we found cases that otherwise would have been missed because the people are asymptomatic,” he said.

He also said that although there have been a few cases that have been connected to local schools since the beginning of the school year, none of them came as the result of transmission in the school, but in family settings outside of the school, and no schools have had to take action thus far.

“We do not expect to have to close schools this year in KFL&A,” he said.

The vaccination rate in the region, which is 86.2% for the first dose, among those eligible, and 80.4% for the second dose, “continues to make steady but slow progress,” he said. “We did see a bump when the passport requirement was announced last week.”

If the current rate of vaccination is maintained. The 90% target for first doses will be reached by Remembrance Day. The 90% second dose target will take until the first week of December if current rates hold. One thousand, seventy nine first doses were administered in KFL&A in the week starting on September 13, and 172 second doses.

While KFL&A compares well with the provincial average, Leeds, Grenville Lanark (LGL), our direct neighbour to the east, has an extremely high vaccination rate. As of September 14, 93% of eligible resident.s had received a first dose, and 87.5 %had received a second dose.

“Everyone is looking at what Lanark Leeds is doing,” said Dr. Guan “We are all trying to figure out why they have been so successful.”

He said that the KFLAPH is using similar outreach programs as LGL in an attempt to bring the vaccine rate up.

In mid-October, Dr. Pietr Oglaza will be taking over as the Medical Officer of Health for the region. Oglaza, who was in family practice in both Verona and Sharbot Lake before steering his career path towards public health. He went to the neighbouring region of Hastings Prince Edward (HPE) in 2016 to complete his public health residency, and took on the role of Medical Officer for HPE in 2018.

He worked closely with Dr. Kieran Moore of KFL&A and Dr. Paula Stewart of LGL, throughout the first 15 months of the pandemic, to provide consistent messaging and policies in Southeastern Ontario.

He differed with Moore on one policy, however. While Halloween trick or treating, with distancing measures in place, was encouraged in KFL&A, Dr. Oglaza did not recommend trick or treating in HPE even though the case rate was lower than the KFL&A case rate at the time. There is no word on the advice he will give in our region for Halloween ’21.