Still a need for basic COVID-19 protections

Medical officer of health trying to figure out why numbers not declining

While Dr. Mustafa Hirji doesn’t understand why Niagara’s active case count has stopped declining, he had some advice for Niagara residents.

Niagara’s active case count declined steadily from 1,047 on May 22 to 486 on June 4. Since then, the numbers have held steady in the low 400s.

“The first thing is we need to make sure we’re getting tested if you have any symptoms,” Hirji said. “That’s going to be important if we are going to stop relying on lockdown measures and rely more on contact tracing. We can’t contact trace unless we know someone has a case.”

As long as that trend continues, Hirji said residents need to continue with the basics of physical distancing, maskwearing and keeping our social circle small and within our own households.

“We need to make sure we keep doing that for a little bit longer,” Hirji said. “Hopefully, we can enjoy the summer and partake in some of the amenities that are opening up. Then, hopefully, as we get into the fall, we will be in a stage where we can start to relax things a bit more. But, for now, we need to keep it up a little bit longer to make sure we don’t have a spike.”

Hirji also said it is important not to get too caught up in small day-to-day fluctuations within the case count and instead rely

more on weekly averages.

“It is like the stock market where things go up and down, but hopefully, over time, you see a bit of a trend,” Hirji said. “And that’s the same with cases. You know, on any day, a case count could be up; it could be down. So we don’t want to make a big deal if one day it’s higher than another day. It is really about looking at it over a little bit of a more extended period.

“I am kind of looking at a seven-day period to see if the average is going up or not. That helps smooth out some of those database bumps and gives me a better sense of where we are trending.”

Hirji said it is also essential to keep in mind that our understanding of the virus has been evolving. For example, in the early days of the pandemic last year, doctors and scientists continually built that knowledge base.

“Nobody knew about this virus a year and a half ago last spring,” Hirji said. “We were three months into it, and we were learning about what the virus is like, and seeing it upfront for the first time and transferring in our society for the first time.

“We learned a lot from that, and we’re still learning a bit more. We are adjusting as we have learned.”