The Third Wave is here
Our province’s chief medical officer of health says the next several weeks will determine how bad the third wave of COVID-19 infections will be.
Doctor David Williams says it’s being driven by the rising number of the more-contagious variants of concern being found.
Almost half of all new cases are being attributed to the different strains.
The majority of them are the variant first uncovered in the United Kingdom.
Williams says, while vaccines are getting into peoples’ arms, we’ll have to be extremely cautious, and the next couple of months will be critical.
A look at the local COVID-19 numbers … steep rise in Greater Sudbury and HSN
There is a steep rise in COVID-19 cases in Greater Sudbury.
Public Health Sudbury & Districts is reporting 41 new cases. 40 of those in Greater Sudbury and only one in the Sudbury District.
Close contact is believed to be the cause, but over 30 are still under investigation.
Considering resolved cases, the agency states there are 261 active cases.
Health Sciences North has also seen a rise in admitted patients.
Dealing with three outbreaks within the organization, the facility is also dealing with cases from the wider community.
They are now 53 admitted patients with 21 confirmed cases and 32 waiting for results.
Of those, there are now eight people in intensive care.
Algoma Public Health has also had a rise in cases over the last three days with 21 active cases of which three are people who do not reside in the jurisdiction but are either receiving treatment or are in self-isolation within the agency’s jurisdiction.
One person is in hospital.
Canada gets boost from U.S.A.
“God Bless America.”
That’s the reaction from Premier Doug Ford following news that the United States will, indeed, ship more AstraZeneca vaccines to Canada.
The Biden administration has agreed to “loan” 1.5-million shots to Canada, and 2.5-million to Mexico.
Ontario would receive more than 500 thousand of those doses.
So far, there’s no arrival date set but federal officials say they could be here by the end of this month.
AstraZeneca has said it will have 30-million doses produced at its American facilities by next month but it has yet to be approved for use in the U-S.