COVID-19 continues to claim lives in the southwest as Ontarians urged to wears masks

As Ontarians are urged to wear masks amid a busy respiratory illness season, COVID-19 continues to claim numerous lives in the southwest corner of the province.

According to the last week's numbers reported by the three health units in our area, there was a total of 20 deaths: 11 in Windsor-Essex, two in Chatham-Kent and seven in Sarnia-Lambton.

According to the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit (WECHU), there hasn't been a death total in the double digits in a week since June. Lambton Public Health says this degree of mortality was last seen in its region in April. 

But as the province and health units have shifted the way they report on COVID-19, it's difficult to find out who is getting sick and dying and how these most recent death tolls compare to earlier on in the pandemic. 

Windsor Regional sees more deaths in 2022

Windsor's biggest hospital has been tracking the number of people who have died in-hospital since the onset of the pandemic. 

There were more deaths at Windsor Regional Hospital (WRH) in the first 10 months of 2022 than there were in all of 2021, and almost three times as many as in all of 2020. Up until the end of October this year, there had been 242 patients with COVID-19 die; in all of 2021, there were 224 deaths. 

Starting with this April, the number of deaths in hospital is up every month, compared to last year. In fact, in that seven-month period, the total deaths jumped by 136 per cent, year over year.

The local health units reported that the recent deaths were all among older people, ranging from 60 to 100+ years old. 

Both WECHU and WRH declined to respond to CBC News' inquiries about the risk of COVID-19 in the community at this time. Acting medical officer of health Dr. Shanker Nesathurai was not available, and a spokesperson for WRH said the health unit "should really lead commenting on this issue for the community."

However Jessica Zehnal, health protection supervisor with Lambton Public Health, provided some insight, saying COVID-19 is becoming an "endemic virus."

"It's starting to circulate along with all the other ones," she said, speaking of the other respiratory illnesses such as influenza that are on the rise across Ontario. 

"We are seeing an increase in all of those illnesses, which is scary, and so that's why we really need to go back to those basic control measures that we know work."

Zehnal says the data doesn't show a change in risk in Sarnia-Lambton at this time, but that it is similar to elsewhere Ontario. 

"This past month, the province did see an increase in COVID-related deaths," said Zehnal. "Lambton Public Health was expecting to see something similar. Thankfully, though, I'm happy to note that the provincial rates of death related to COVID-19 have plateaued this past week. We're also expecting to see that similar trend locally."

Indeed, in the new weekly report released today, there was only one death in Sarnia-Lambton.

Dr. Fahad Razak is an internist and epidemiologist at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto and the former director of Ontario's COVID-19 Science Advisory Table. He says frailer members of society continue to be at risk for COVID-19. 

"And in fact we're not seeing a real receding of the wave of what started in the summer with COVID. We're seeing this continued onslaught of deaths ..." he said on CBC's Windsor Morning.

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"I think we need to take it seriously because it's continuing to show it can really affect people, and the numbers that are affected put it up into the realm of other serious illnesses that we do care really about."

Razak says while the disease may be fatally affecting older people with underlying issues more, young people should still be concerned about the long-term effects the illness can have on their bodies. 

He says vaccines continue to be highly effective, but uptake across Canada is relatively low. 

"I think that reflects the fact that people don't think about COVID as much. They're not going out and getting those booster doses," said Razak.