All positive COVID-19 test results in the region are now being tested for the Omicron variant.
That from the Acting Medical Officer of Health in Windsor-Essex.
The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit reported its first case of the new variant on Tuesday. However, public health officials believe it has been here longer.
Doctor Shanker Nesathurai said over the past few weeks, the assumption was that the variant would eventually make its way to Windsor-Essex. He noted many of his colleagues believe it will be the dominant strain of COVID-19 in Ontario by the end of the month. It spreads much faster than previous strains.
He and CEO Nicole Dupuis again stressed the urgency for the remaining 50,000 residents in the region who are not vaccinated to get their shots.
The rate of fully vaccination in the region has only been slowly creeping upwards. It is below the provincial average, and the health unit estimates about 50,000 people haven't had their first dose. Dupuis admitted she never thought it would be such a struggle to reach 90 per cent, especially with the resources that have gone into education.
"We are all struggling to figure out what strategies haven't we used to reach individuals," she said. "Just given the amount of resources, and effort, and work that's being done to reach into our community, I would have expected to be higher than we are."
In a moment of candour, Nesathurai confessed he never anticipated we would still be fighting COVID-19 so long after the pandemic started.
"I don't think any of us thought we'd be here in 20 months," he said. "I don't think we fully understood what the consequences would be and the level of persistence of our public health management. We do have tools at our hand, and we're not using them as fully as we could."
Meanwhile, Dupuis told reporters preparations are underway at the mass vaccination clinic at Devonshire Mall to increase capacity ahead of opening up the booster shots to a broader population.
On Wednesday, the health unit reported 96 new cases of COVID-19. How many of those involve the Omicron variant is not yet known since genome sequencing to confirm the strain can take some time. Genome sequencing is different from the initial test all samples are currently undergoing.
Of the new cases, 48 remain under investigation. Twenty-eight are the result of close contact. Seventeen people caught the virus in the community, and three are related to one of the 31 outbreaks in the region.
There was also another death. The most recent is a woman in her 80s who lived in the community. Her passing raises the number of local fatalities from the virus to 483.
There are 636 active cases. The health unit is in touch with 7,000 close contacts. Thirty-seven people are in area hospitals, and 14 of them are in intensive care.
Ontario has another 1,808 new cases and 12,666 active ones. There are 357 people in the hospital across Ontario, and 154 in intensive care.
Including the woman in Windsor-Essex, nine deaths are reported across the province.
