“Not heading in the right direction”

Southwestern Public Health Medical Officer of Health Dr. Joyce Lock, in a weekly news briefing on Wednesday, May 12, said that the health unit was tracking 136 ongoing cases of COVID-19 in Elgin, Middlesex and London, which was a higher number than the previous Wednesday.

“We are not heading in the right direction,” she warned.

Of those ongoing cases, 67 percent involved “variants of concern” considered more contagious and/or creating more severe symptoms that the original strain of COVID-19.

Variants were a factor in a weeklong outbreak at Tillsonburg District Memorial Hopsital, which as of May 12 involved 15 patients and five staff members, she said. One of those patients had died.

On the positive side, Dr. Lock stated that 80,000 Southwestern residents had so far received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, or 38 percent of the total population.

She noted that at the provincial level, Ontario was currently considering starting to administer Pfizer vaccine to children 12 through 15 years old.

The federal government had recently declared that vaccine safe for use in that age range.

Locally, the supply of vaccines to the area had increased substantially, she continued. “It means a whole lot more of you can be vaccinated.”