Kingston MOH says COVID-19 vaccines keeping region from locking down
Global News
Despite extremely high case counts in the KFL&A region, Dr. Piotr Oglaza says the area's high vaccination rates are allowing workplaces and schools to remain open.
As COVID-19 cases continue to rise in the region, KFL&A Public Health’s medical officer of health joined Tuesday night’s city council meeting to give an update to the region.
At this point, he says lockdown measures are not on the horizon for the area.
“Our two main goals of pandemic response in the KFL&A region is to keep schools and workplaces open and maintain health-care capacity,” Dr. Piotr Oglaza told council.
But, with the Kingston region reaching record-high COVID-19 rates, and the news of Kingston hospitals having to offload some patients due to high COVID-19 hospitalizations, many members of the community are wondering if further restrictions to curb the spread of the virus will follow.
Oglaza has long maintained that lockdown measures that worked before just won’t pass muster in the fourth wave. He says the major difference this time around is the region’s high vaccination rate. As of Tuesday, more than 82 per cent of the five and up population have two doses.
“Some of these broad measures that were saving us in the previous waves are not applicable to a situation where vast majority of the population are immunized and are also not going to address the patterns of spread that we see,” he said.
Oglaza maintains that the driving factor for the spread of the virus is household gatherings, which now account for more than half of local transmission of COVID-19.
And while there are vaccinated individuals contracting the virus, Oglaza says, for the most part, those testing positive for COVID-19 are unvaccinated.