London's top doctor worried about post-Thanksgiving virus spread

Public health officials had urged people to keep family gatherings small and, if possible, virtual this Thanksgiving weekend to reduce potential spread of the coronavirus.

But on Tuesday, Western University's residence parking lots were bustling as students returned to a campus that had been deserted most of the weekend. 

"It's not on my floor yet, so I'm really not too worried about it," said Cal Lewis, a student who lives in London Hall and visited family.

He learned the news over the weekend that his residence is the first Western University residence to declare an outbreak after four students tested positive. 

"I'm just going to stay on my floor and do what I can to keep safe." 

"We trust him," said his mother Kristen. "He's doing a good job." 

Out of town visits will cause more outbreaks, says doctor

Mackie said with one outbreak at London Hall, it's only a matter of time before there are more.

"To hear that a lot of people went home for Thanksgiving, that's disappointing," Dr. Chris Mackie, the medical officer of health for the London region, told CBC Radio One's London Morning Tuesday. 

"When people are indoors, especially in tight groups in places with poor ventilation, that's where you see cases spread very quickly," he said.  "You need to be sitting right beside somebody for a significant amount of time."

"We know for sure that will cause cases and potentially outbreaks elsewhere. You have a residence that's in outbreak, that means people would have been infected last week and now they're going home to family, so that's concerning."

Mackie said symptoms of coronavirus take anywhere from two to five days to materialize, meaning if someone either caught or spread the virus at a family gathering on Sunday, the soonest symptoms would start to appear would be Tuesday or Wednesday. 

Mackie said it will take another one to two weeks to see the number of new cases acquired during the Thanksgiving weekend show up in the numbers.

He added that chances are, things are only going to get worse, especially as the weather gets colder. 

"The reality is there is no reason to believe things would slow down. The modified stage two that's been enacted in Peel, Ottawa and Toronto has not been enacted here, at least not yet."

"We're likely to see more close contact indoors and more spread over the next few weeks until some additional public health measures have been put into place." 

Whether any additional health measures will be coming to Western University residences to protect students from each other and their out of town families isn't clear.

Western's vice-president of housing, Chris Alleyne, said in a written statement that pandemic protocols are in place at the school's on-campus residences. 

They include increased sanitization efforts, plexiglass barriers, physical distancing measures and face covering requirements in hallways. Students in residence are not allowed to visit other residences on campus and can't invite guests from outside the residence system into their homes.