N.B. COVID-19 roundup: 4 deaths, epidemiologist urges caution on loosening restrictions

New Brunswick recorded four more COVID-related deaths Monday.

A person in their 80s in the Saint John region, Zone 2, two people in their 60s in the Edmundston region, Zone 4, and a person in their 80s in the Miramichi region, Zone 7, who had COVID-19 have died.

Their deaths mark 35 COVID-related deaths since the province returned to the less restrictive Level 2 of the COVID-19 winter plan Jan. 28 at 11:59 p.m., two days ahead of schedule.

While some jurisdictions across Canada are considering loosening pandemic restrictions, one infection control epidemiologist is urging caution.

Some indicators look promising for a gradual removal of restrictions, but there are still a number of unknowns, said Colin Furness of the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto.

Furness, who has been watching New Brunswick's experience with the pandemic since it started, points to possible new variants, including a potentially more infectious subvariant of Omicron, BA.2, now confirmed in the province.

But Furness says his biggest concern is brain tissue loss attributed to COVID, which hasn't been properly studied.

"We could think about it, I think, roughly in terms of serious head injury," he said.

"You know, people do have head injuries sometimes and there's loss of brain tissue that comes from a serious head injury. And that, you know, in the short-term, that results in the brain fog, that long-COVID brain fog-type scenario, where …  it's difficult to concentrate.

"But what we don't know are what are the longer-term effects in terms of development of something like Parkinson's disease or early onset dementia."

Furness said COVID will remain a major concern for some people for the foreseeable future.

This includes children under the age of five, who aren't yet eligible to be vaccinated, the elderly and the immunocompromised.

151 people in hospital, 16 in ICU

There are 151 people in hospital, eight fewer than Sunday, the dashboard shows.

Of those, 68 were hospitalized for COVID-19, while the other 83 were originally admitted for something else when they tested positive for the virus.

Sixteen people are in intensive care, a decrease of one, and eight of them are on ventilators, also down one.

Among those in hospital, one person is aged 19 or under and among those in ICU, one person is in their 20s.

The province's hospitals are listed at 89 per cent capacity and the ICUs at 77 per cent.

There are 344 health-care workers off the job, isolating, after testing positive for COVID. That includes 150 at the Horizon Health Network, 141 at the Vitalité Health Network and 53 at Extra-Mural/Ambulance New Brunswick.

Public Health recorded 261 new cases of COVID, based on PCR (polymerase chain reaction) lab tests, putting the province's active case count at 3,454.

An additional 518 people reported testing positive on rapid tests.

The regional breakdown of PCR-confirmed cases includes:

Moncton region, Zone 1

•  90 new cases and 1,320 active cases

Saint John region, Zone 2

• 46 new cases and 805 active cases

Fredericton region, Zone 3

• 40 new cases and 456 active cases

Edmundston region, Zone 4

• 12 new cases and 298 active cases

Campbellton region, Zone 5

• Three new cases and 107 active cases

Bathurst region, Zone 5

• 48 new cases and 311 active cases

Miramichi region, Zone 7

• 22 cases and 157 active cases

A total of 699,424 PCR tests have been conducted to date, including 1,118 on Sunday.

As of Monday, 46.5 per cent of eligible New Brunswickers have received their booster shot, up from 46.3 per cent, 85.4 per cent have received two doses of a vaccine, up from 85.3 per cent, and 92.4 per cent have received one dose, up from 92.3 per cent, according to the dashboard.

New Brunswick has had 31,017 cases of COVID since the beginning of the pandemic, with 27,298 recoveries so far and 263 COVID-related deaths.