KFL&A COVID Advantage Dissipates

Jeff Green | Nov 02, 2022

Early on in COVID, the KFL&A region was the best place to be in Canada. The reason for that was that KFL&A was the only region that did not see any major outbreaks in long term care facilities, and we were able and willing to isolate when the first COVID orders came out.

We were one of the first communities to have a mask mandate in place, and we had one of the highest rates of vaccination in the province. On November 1st of 2021, only 6 COVID deaths had been reported in the region, and the local tracking had remained effective for 18 months. On that date, there were no COVID patients in local hospitals.

Our death rate was 4% of the rate in Canada as a whole, and less than one per cent of the rate in the United States.

Since then, our death rate has been about the same as the rest of Canada and about 50% of the rate in the United States.

The KFL&A advantage did not survive the Delta or Omicron waves. As some may recall, in early December of last year, the combination of an outdoor Christmas market in Amherstview and a national rugby tournament attended by the Queen’s Rugby team, made this region the hot spot for the Delta variant.

Now, Omicron and its variants are moving freely through our communities, hospitalisations and ICU admissions are regularly increasing, and there are calls from healthcare workers for more support.

Some of the concerns that were stated as justifications for public health measures early in the pandemic, that our already stressed healthcare system would be at risk from large numbers of COVID patients taking up resources, that the flu and COVID seasons would become intermingled, causing confusion among health care workers and the public at large, are now coming to pass.

And the restrictions are gone, and aren’t coming back, in our region and the province as a whole. We have an effective vaccine, at least in terms of limiting the numbers of us who will become very sick with COVID, and that is preventing some truly dire outcomes.

Unfortunately, the uptake of the most recent dose of vaccine has been relatively weak. There are reasons for this. Vaccine fatigue, COVID fatigue, and some confusion over how long people who have had COVID (and a lot of people have had COVID) should wait before taking their next vaccine. The recommendation is 6 months, with a minimum of 3 months, according to the province.

Some people are beginning to wear masks indoors, as a precaution, but only some.

All in all, it looks like we are in for a long, cold, COVID infused winter, and no less so in our region than anywhere else in North America.