COVID-19 in 2021: A look at the second year of the Windsor-Essex pandemic

Article content

About a year ago, a local personal support worker received the first COVID-19 vaccine in Windsor-Essex at St. Clair College SportsPlex, then refurbished as a field hospital for a pandemic.

Article content

Fast forward to today, and more than 720,000 doses have been administered to area residents over 12 months containing lockdowns, school closings, rapidly spreading variants of the virus, and more than 340 COVID-related deaths.

To conclude a second year with COVID-19, the Windsor Star took a trip back in time with Nicole Dupuis, executive director of the local health unit, to recount the largest pandemic events of 2021.

“Last January, we were racing to get started with COVID-19 vaccines. That was a great milestone, ”said Dupuis. “We also had an unprecedented number of cases and outbreaks.”

About two weeks after the New Year, the region’s seven-day infection rate exceeded 300 cases per 100,000 people, more than double the rate in mid-December 2021. COVID-19 hospitalizations and admissions in ICUs were at an all-time high, with multiple COVID-related deaths being reported every day.

Article content

Dozens of nursing homes and long-term care homes had active outbreaks, some of which dated back to November and December. One particularly affected facility, Village at St. Clair in Windsor, had cases of 177 residents and 141 employees, while others had infection counts down to just one or two.

But as vaccines entered more homes and began to protect many of the region’s most vulnerable, most outbreaks slowly ended and COVID deaths became less frequent.

Despite improvements in long-term care and nursing homes and gradually declining transmission rates in the wider community, students across the province remained at home, learning remotely, as the Schools that were considered too risky for children to attend remained closed.

Article content

In March, when restrictions were gradually lifted in other regions of Ontario, Windsor-Essex was caught in the “red” status of the province’s COVID-19 response framework, leaving severe restrictions and capacity limits on businesses, restaurants. , social gatherings and more. Places like cinemas, casinos and performing arts venues were forced to stay closed. Local politicians pleaded with Queen’s Park to allow the region to reopen, arguing that business owners had suffered enough already.

Meanwhile, the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit and its partners continued to roll out COVID-19 vaccines. Mass vaccination sites were opened at Nature Fresh Farms Recreation Center in Leamington, Book Credit Union Center in Amherstburg, and in Windsor at WFCU Center, Windsor Hall, the former Windsor Star Building, downtown, and St. Clair College SportsPlex.

Article content

“Everything was down to business,” Dupuis said. “We were shifting all available resources towards vaccination. We had a multimodal plan that continues to this day: mobile vaccinations, mass vaccinations, helping and working with our primary care providers … It was just a huge, tremendous effort ”.

Once healthcare workers and residents of nursing homes and long-term care homes were vaccinated, eligibility was opened to everyone 80 years of age and older. A few weeks later, people 75 and older could book appointments.

Eligibility continued to expand to younger and younger age groups until mid-May, when all adults were allowed to receive their first jab. At the same time, health officials said they were ready to begin administering the necessary second doses to the first vaccinated.

Article content

Behind the scenes, changes were taking place in the health unit. Former CEO Theresa Marentette announced her retirement in April and handed the reins over to Dupuis in July. In August, former Medical Health Officer Dr. Wajid Ahmed announced that he would soon be leaving his post to help lead the fight against COVID in Ontario as the province’s Associate Medical Health Officer. In September, Dr. Shanker Nesathurai took over as Acting Medical Health Officer as the Health Unit Board continued its search for a permanent replacement.

When Dupuis became CEO after several years as the health unit’s health promotion director, she was planning for post-pandemic recovery.

“It’s maybe a bit of a different vision for all of us, where we think we would be at the end of 2021,” he said. “We thought we would be moving toward 2022 which would be more about recovery and less about COVID – here we are, still moving toward vaccination and talking about a new variant.”

Article content

Variants of COVID-19 consistently made headlines this year and regularly were a roadblock to disease management around the world. The alpha variant, which spread across the UK after its discovery in November last year, caused a sensation in Windsor-Essex with over 1,800 reported cases, while the beta, gamma and kappa variants looked more like drops in the world. ocean.

Officials sounded the alarms about the delta variant in August, when only about a dozen cases had been registered locally. Dr. Ahmed said the region would need a first dose vaccination rate of at least 90 percent to prevent a delta-driven fourth wave.

Four months later, the region’s single-dose coverage stands at just over 82%.

Most of the activities returned to near normal during the summer and fall, and the children returned to the classroom in September for the first time in nine months. In the time since, more than 14,000 children have been ordered to self-isolate after classroom exposures to COVID-19, and additional public health restrictions have been reintroduced across the region to stem the growing spread of disease.

Although the highly contagious omicron variant and the launch of the booster vaccine are currently the health unit’s top priorities, Dupuis said he hopes his team can shift focus to some non-COVID health programs in 2022. site to prevent drug overdose, which has been delayed due to the pandemic.

“It took a little longer than any of us would have liked, but I am very hopeful that we will see that materialize.”