With occurrences of COVID-19 cases involving variants on the rise, the Windsor Essex County Health Unit is adjusting testing protocols for close contacts.
To date, 511 cases involving variants of concern have been identified. Of those, 430 have been confirmed as United Kingdom variant B.1.1.7. There are currently 121 active cases that have been identified as variants.
All household contacts of symptomatic individuals are required to self-isolate until the symptomatic individual receives a negative test result. If test results come back positive, all high-risk contacts will be required to self-isolate and get tested for the virus. The health unit recommends being tested after seven days of being exposed. If a person tests too early, they may be referred for testing again after day 10.
“Sometimes what happens is, individuals just go and get tested two to three days after the initial test, which could be a negative because of the incubation period, so especially in the VOC cases we would want everyone to get tested again at day 10 if they were previously tested in the earlier time,” said Medical Officer of Health Doctor Wajid Ahmed.
On Monday, the health unit reported 41 new cases of COVID-19. It takes about two to three days to identify if any of these infections involve variants.
Local hospitals are treating 12 patients who have tested positive for the virus, and five of those are in the intensive care unit.
No additional deaths connected to COVID-19 were reported Monday, but there have been 409 in the region so far.
