KFL & A Region Continues to Have Worst COVID-19 Case Rates in Canada – Kingston | The Canadian News

The Kingston region continues to top the list when it comes to COVID-19 cases per 100,000. KFL & A reported 154 new cases Wednesday and active cases are now at 1,557.

During a media call on Wednesday, medical health officer Dr. Piotr Oglaza said that KFL & A Public Health continues to have high testing rates, but that it also comes with high positivity rates.

This leads Oglaza to believe that “there could be several cases that we are not detecting through testing” in the community.

“It is something that we will continue to monitor very closely and we will continue to monitor very closely,” Oglaza said. “There is strong evidence that it is spreading throughout the community and the predominant pathogen, the predominant variant at the moment is Omicron.”

The reason for this, he says, is that those who become infected with Omicron will show symptoms early on and have a shorter incubation period. He says they may not get tested right away and likely spread before they realize they are infected.

“It is very possible that there is a lot of exposure in the community in various settings that happens inadvertently by someone who has symptoms and attends those places,” said Oglaza.

While the region seems to be trending in the right direction when it comes to going through this Omicron wave, people need to consider how they spend their vacations, as the variant can quickly spread in small social settings.

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While the 18-29 age group continues to dominate new cases in Kingston, the fact that the city’s post-secondary student population has declined over the holidays may not lead to fewer cases.

He says many of the cases in that group come from people who are not affiliated with Queen’s, St. Lawrence College or the Royal Military College.

According to its COVID-19 tracker, Queen’s University reported just over 350 new cases last week, when active cases in Kingston were 1,539 as of Tuesday.

The good news, it seems, is that so far the Omicron variant has not produced any serious cases among those infected. Oglaza says that all current hospital cases remain of the Delta variant.

“We may not see that impact very soon, but it is concerning that once we start to see further spread among the older adult population, that could lead to some numbers,” he said.

Vaccination rates continue to be high in the region. Oglaza reported that KFL & A has reached 90 percent of the first doses administered starting at age five, and has administered more than 56,000 booster injections so far.

“That is also very, very great and a high number considering this third dose launch started relatively recently and on December 20, we delivered 9,000 doses throughout the region.”

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