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North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit backs more restrictions if hospitals become clogged

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The North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit says it is looking at changing the way it updates COVID-19 case counts in the region from reporting all cases to only sharing data on hospital admissions and people in ICU.

The health unit has identified more than 800 positive cases in the North Bay and Parry Sound districts in the last two weeks and said the landscape of the pandemic has changed.

“These cases are a vast underrepresentation of the number of people that have COVID-19 in our district because of the limited capacity for testing,” said the health unit’s public health physician Dr. Carol Zimbalatti.

The health unit said Thursday it is looking at adjusting the way it reports future cases by only providing data on the number of hospitalizations, ICU admissions and people on ventilators.

“We will be looking at our dashboard and what we are reporting so it provides the most meaningful picture of what is happening with the pandemic locally,” said Zimbalatti.

The health unit’s reporting is modelled after the province when deciding what information is most critical for the public.

Medical Officer of Health Dr. Jim Chirico said if hospitalizations continue to rise, he would back tighter restrictions in the region.

“It’s really trying to find the balance between economics and health, as well as the mental and physical well-being of students in school and the general public,” Chirico said.

Ontario health officials reported Thursday more than 300 people with COVID-19 are in intensive care units across the province, as hospitals struggle to cope with rising admissions.

For several days, the province has reported a daily increase in ICU admissions and hospitalizations. The number of people in hospital with COVID-19 rose from 2,081 on Wednesday to 2,279 on Thursday. Intensive care unit admissions jumped from 288 to 319.

The province said that of the 319 people in the ICU with COVID-19, 232 are not fully vaccinated or have an unknown vaccination status and 87 are fully vaccinated.

It’s been almost two years since the beginning of the pandemic and Chirico is the first to admit that he believed it would be over by now.

“We’ve learned a lot and we’ve got a lot of things in place,” he said. “We’ve made mistakes but we’ve learned from them.”

In the North Bay and Parry Sound Districts, there are 443 active COVID-19 cases. Nine people in the region have lost their lives to the virus. More than 85 per cent of people 12 and older are fully vaccinated. 

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