"The public health service will not be sending a Section 22 order at this point."
That is the response from the Acting Medical Officer of Health at the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit when asked if he would mandate masks in schools.
Doctor Shanker Nesathurai highly recommends masking in all indoor public spaces. The viral load in wastewater testing is at its highest level since testing started. The high-risk case count is up 6.7 per cent from last week to 201.1 cases per 100,000 residents. The percentage of positive tests is now 21.9 per cent and 5.4 per cent in long-term care settings. However, Nesathurai insists a masking mandate must come from the province.
He has repeatedly asked his provincial colleagues to consider it, and he's not alone.
"The Medical Officer of Health in Niagara has asked for the same. The Medical Officer of Health in Peterborough has asked for the same," said Nesathurai. "I also think that institutions and organizations can formulate their own policies as permitted by law, and I think that their approaches would also be helpful in managing the pandemic."
The trouble is that school boards can't issue their own rules.
"We have been advised legally and by the Minister that school boards do not have the ability to implement or enforce any mask mandate passed at a board of trustee level," said Greater Essex County District School Board Chair Alicia Higgison earlier this week. "Our hands are a bit tied there."
Not that some school boards aren't trying. Trustees at the Thames Valley District School Board put masking rules back in place in a 7-5 vote on Tuesday night.
Nesathurai has also asked, repeatedly, for a return to widespread PCR testing, but again, the province has been silent. Without that key metric, public health officials are in the dark about the virus's true spread in the region.
"PCR testing is technically superior to rapid antigen testing, so it's something we would recommend so long as there is capacity in the laboratories to do PCR testing," he said.
Nesathurai did not say if local labs can handle the demand for widespread testing but said health units do not have to test exclusively. Testing could be done in doctor's offices or at pharmacies.
Wastewater data and case rates could indicate hospitalizations one or two weeks into the future. At this point, hospitalizations are virtually unchanged from last week, but it remains to be seen how it will impact local hospitals. Nesathurai 3,500 people are still waiting for surgical procedures in Windsor-Essex.
The health unit reported 109 new COVID-19 cases in high-risk settings on Thursday, and an active caseload of 386, which is slightly down from Wednesday.
The number of patients in hospital is relatively stable, with 56 being treated. Forty-eight of them are at Windsor Regional Hospital with 30 admitted primarily for the virus. Two people are in intensive care. Eight more patients are at Erie Shores Healthcare, with six admitted for COVID-19.
The health unit is monitoring 28 active COVID-19 outbreaks, with 12 in long-term care and retirement facilities, nine in the community, six in hospitals, and one in a workplace.
---with files from Mark Brown
