Hamilton's COVID-19 numbers seem stable, but too early to say it's the peak: official

After an uptick in cases over the past week, Hamilton's COVID-19 data appears to show the virus' spread is slowing, but the city's director of epidemiology says it's too early to call it the third wave's peak.

"We are in a place where our numbers are perhaps at that plateau point, I can't say that for sure, but certainly we are looking like potentially that's the case," Michelle Baird said.

On Monday, the city's number of active cases (1,501) and its seven-day case average (155) have both dropped in the past days.

The city's reproduction number is also at 1.09, which means the virus is still spreading but at a slower rate than it was last week.

Hamilton's number of resolved cases is starting to rise again, to 87 per cent of all 16,463 confirmed and probable cases recorded since the beginning of the pandemic.

But the numbers are still far too high, particularly the number of local COVID-19 tests coming back positive at 9.1 per cent — that means almost one in 10 tests are coming back positive and is overwhelming public health's ability to track down the virus' spread.

She added more than 75 per cent of cases over the past week are a mutation or variant of concern.

Public health reported 107 new confirmed cases and no new deaths on Monday.

There are 161 people with the virus in hospital and 353 people who were diagnosed with the virus have died.

2 new outbreaks, 1 with variants of concern

There are two new COVID-19 outbreaks and 42 total, according to the city website.

Cable 14 Hamilton has two infected workers and screened positive for a variant of concern. 

Coppley Limited also has two infected workers, but no variant.

Baird said she's concerned about outbreaks with the variants, particularly in workplaces, but there's no sign public health will close any places down after a certain number of infections.

Vaccine supply is still low, frustrated callers lashing out

Baird said the city is doing the best it can to vaccinate people quickly, but pointed to supply issues. She said anecdotally local pharmacies, as well as the public health unit, are hoping for more doses to arrive soon.

She added public health staff have faced "disrespectful and abusive behaviour" from frustrated callers trying to book vaccine appointments. Baird said if a caller lashes out at staff, the call will end.

Though she acknowledged a lot of different groups are getting vaccinations in phase two, almost 300,000 people's worth, which has made for "confusing and I will say complicated" messaging about booking appointments.

The city says it has administered 174,638 doses of vaccine, which is 29.8 per cent of those who can get immunized, according to the data. That's almost a third of all eligible people.

Some of the populations with the lowest rates of vaccination include adults receiving chronic home care at eight per cent, adults aged 55 to 59-years-old, and essential caregivers in long-term care and retirement homes at 24 per cent.

The city also recently said it would offer more vaccine spots exclusively for people of colour.

Brant

The county of Brant and Brantford are reporting 15 new cases.

Brant currently has 293 active cases and 14 people are in hospital.

The latest update puts the county's overall confirmed case count at 2,600. Seventeen people have died.

There have been 46,855 vaccine doses administered so far in the county.

Haldimand-Norfolk

Health officials in Haldimand-Norfolk reported 20 new cases of COVID-19 on Monday.

The counties currently have a total of 271 active cases and there have been 2,192 infections since March 2020. 

Forty-one deaths have been linked to the virus.

There have been 32,959 immunizations.

Halton

Another 148 people in Halton are known to have COVID-19, for a total of 14,520 cases since the start of the pandemic. Overall, 209 people have died and 13,427 are marked as resolved.

Of Halton's total cases, 3,237 have been a COVID-19 variant.

As for Burlington, 41 more people are known to have COVID-19, for a total of 264 active cases.

Since last March, 3,572 people have tested positive for the virus (711 were variants), of which 3,257 cases are resolved and 52 have died.

Niagara

There are 24 new coronavirus cases in the Niagara Region. One more person has also died, for a total of 387 deaths.

Niagara public health said they're an accurate count of all cases reported, but "suspect there's an error in Ontario's laboratory system reporting cases to us."

"We informed the province of this issue and are working with them to investigate," read a tweet from Niagara public health.

The region has now recorded a total of 13,080 cases of COVID-19 and 2,457 of those are active.

Niagara public health has so far administered 162,988 vaccination doses, which accounts for 31.5 per cent of the regional population. Niagara Health has administered 81,421 doses.

Six Nations

Six Nations of the Grand River has recorded 29 active cases of COVID-19. There have been 486 total cases and 445 are resolved. Ten people have died. 

There have been 13 B117 cases, and 18 more cases that screened positive as a variant of concern require confirmation.

One person is in hospital and 202 are in self-isolation.

Six Nations has administered 1,152 vaccine doses.