No community is immune – COVID-19 in KFL&A

Jeff Green | Apr 01, 2020

(This article has been altered from the version that was published in the Frontenac News on Thursday, April 2, with new information as it has become available)

As of Saturday morning, April 4, there were 48 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Kingston Frontenac Lennox and Addington, the area covered by the KFL&A Public Health, the agency that is co-ordinated the response to the outbreak in this region. Those 43 cases put KFL&A on there higher end in Ontario in per capita terms. With a population of 200,000, it works out to 2.4 confirmed cases for every 10,000 people, the provincial average is about 2.17 cases per 10,000 people, about 15% lower.

But, as pointed out by Denis Doyle, chair of KFL&A Public Health and Mayor or Frontenac Islands Township, “our testing is pretty robust here. One of the reasons our positive tests are high, is because we are doing more testing.”

KFL&A has done 1031 tests, according to figures published by Public Health, about 10% more than the provincial average.

Dr. Kieran Moore, Medical Officer of Health for KFL&A said on Monday (when there were 34 confirmed cases) that the risk for KFL&A residents remains low, mainly because most of the positive tests so far in this region have been from people who had been travelling or whose case can be traced to someone who had been travelling.

“Community transmission remains low, and we need to be diligent in the coming weeks through physical distancing, that this remains the case,” he said, adding that as of Monday only 1 person was in hospital in KFL&A for treatment of COVID-19.

As of Friday, when there were 47 cases, he was said that the social distancing seems to have been effective in the region.

"We saw a spike last weekend but the numbers have been steady this week, so I am optimistic, but we can't let our guard down," he said.

We have attempted to obtain a breakdown of KFL&A cases by township or even county, but Public Health is not releasing that information for privacy reasons.

Dr. Moore said however, that there have been confirmed cases throughout Kingston Frontenac Lennox and Addington.

"It is everywhere in KFLA, you can safely assume there are cases in your community," he said. 

Dennis Doyle said that the Public Health has diverted 72 staff members from various departments to work on COVID-19, and that efforts to combat the virus were underway well before the first case was identified in Canada.

“It is a monumental effort,” he said.

As a a result of that diversion, the  Sharbot Lake and Cloyne Public Health Offices have been closed except for one day a week and the staff have been diverted to the COVID effort.

Businesses in the region have all put in distancing protocols, but those protocols vary widely. Even in similar businesses, such as pharmacies, the range is very broad, depending on the location, the physical setup of the pharmacy, and how busy they are. Some are limiting the number of customers that can enter the pharmacy at any time to as few as one or two, some are monitoring the numbers in an informal way, while at least one has shut its doors to the public, while remaining open to phone or email orders with curbside pickup outside the store.

Working from the numbers, it is clear that the risk of infection remains one the lesser risks that people face on a day to day basis. Other health risks outweigh it, as does the risk of a car accident when driving to the store. With an infection rate of 2.4 for every 10,000 people and a 98% survival rate for those who become infected, we face a minute risk as individuals. The risk is greater for the elderly and immune-compromised once they are infected, but fortunately the risk of infection remains low, so far.

There is no reason to act out of panic or fear, we are not at death’s door every time we leave the house. This is a good thing because fear and panic are not the most reliable of motivators and they have their own associations with bad health outcomes. 

But we do need to act rationally, out of basic civic responsibility, to our families and our communities. The risk we all face is the risk of spread, which can multiply the risk to each of us very quickly, as we have seen in the pockets of the word where infections have run rampant, with devastating impacts.

If we remain calm and mitigate the risks we take by following the directives from Public Health, by keeping our distance from people, coughing into our sleeves, washing our hands and staying home when we can and all the time when we are sick, and if we can keep this up for at least a month, we may see a reasonable outcome to this on a regional, provincial and national scale.

Then we will need to figure out how to start interacting again. Distancing will not go away for quite a while, but some semblance of normal life will need to return.