COVID-19 Testing Center at Mohawk College in Hamilton to Relocate – Hamilton | The Canadian News

The City of Hamilton and St. Joseph’s Hospital are scheduled to relocate the COVID-19 testing center at Mohawk College to a new location on the mountain next month.

Public Health says the former Future Shop location at 1565 Upper James St. near Rymal Road East will become the new center on December 17.

The existing site will be closed on the 15th, and the West End Clinic on Main Street West will provide a buffer on December 16 to accommodate testing during the transition.

“The physical location is the only change that will affect the public,” said Michelle Baird, Hamilton’s director of epidemiology, wellness and communicable diseases.

“The phone numbers, the online booking site, and the ways clients retrieve their results remain the same according to provincial guidelines.”

Currently, Hamilton COVID testing centers do not accept walk-ins and appointments must be booked in advance at www.hamiltoncovidtest.ca

Baird said the move will not alter the city’s potential testing capacity, which is about 1,000 per day for the Mohawk College site and 500 for the West End testing center.

“There is the potential for people to get tested on the same day if they need to, so at this point we have no concerns on the testing front from a capacity perspective,” Baird said.

Hamilton’s testing regiment has changed in recent months and capacity expanded at the Mohawk and West End branches in August before the return of in-person learning in public schools.

Mobile clinics targeting neighborhoods struggling with positive cases were also another addition to their initiatives in mid-October.

City clinics do not offer requests for tests associated with travel or to enter public events such as those currently offered by regional pharmacies.

Hamilton Public Health reported 57 new COVID-19 cases over the weekend and a drop in active cases since Friday.

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The city’s seven-day average case rate has declined slightly in recent days, registering at 9 p.m. on Monday compared to Friday’s average of 10 a day.

So far, throughout November, the city has an average rate of 20 cases per day, slightly lower than the 22 cases per day reported in October.

Active cases were down to 158 as of Nov. 29, 11 down from 169 reported on Friday.

More than 72% of all active cases correspond to people under 50 years of age, while 39% are under 30 years of age.

The city’s percent positivity rate, which represents the number of tests that return positive in labs, stands at 2.4 percent, lower than the provincial average of 3.5 percent reported Monday.

Since the pandemic began in March 2020, Hamilton has reported 25,766 COVID cases.

There are eight ongoing outbreaks reported linked to a total of 39 cases across the city as of November 29. The largest is at St. Gabriel Catholic Elementary School, which has 14 cases in total, one among staff and 13 among students.

As of Monday, there are six ongoing school outbreaks connected to a total of 25 cases.

In the past 14 days, both public boards together have reported 66 cases, with 50 among students.

Hospitals in Hamilton reported a total of 14 COVID-19 patients as of Thursday: nine at Hamilton Health Sciences and five at St. Joe’s.

Currently, the city averages less than one new hospital admission each day.

Over the weekend, Hamilton’s health partners administered more than 6,130 doses of vaccines, and on Friday it recorded the highest intake for the week with 2,813 injections.

With a COVID-19 vaccine available for children ages 5 to 11, the city saw a 56.7 percent increase in doses administered week over week.

Over the past seven days, the city fired 12,500 shots, about 4,500 more than from November 15 to November 21.

November’s average number of shots per day also received a boost, going from 1,057 on Friday to 1,239 on Sunday.

That’s more than the daily average recorded for October: 1,068 per day.

Public health estimates that approximately 17 percent of the city’s 42,000 children eligible for a vaccine have been scheduled into the city’s VERTO reservation system as of Monday.

As of Sunday, 83.3 percent of eligible Hamiltonians age 12 and older have been fully vaccinated, while 86.7 percent have received at least a single dose. The city still lags behind the provincial average, which has 86.3 percent fully vaccinated and 89.7 percent with at least one dose of vaccine.

Residents ages 70 to 84 have reached the Ministry of Health’s goal of 90% coverage of the first and second doses. Meanwhile, Hamiltonians ages 25-29 account for the lowest vaccination rates of those eligible in the community with just over 73 percent fully vaccinated.

Hamilton trails 31 other public health units in the percentage of two-dose vaccines in Ontario.

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