Hamiltonians moving around at 'concerning' levels during pandemic: public health

Hamilton public health says recently people have been moving around the city at "concerning" levels according to data presented at a Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS) town hall.

Dr. Dominik Mertz, HHS medical director of infection prevention control, showed the data on Thursday, explaining the recent stay-at-home order led to less movement, but the data shows people are starting to move around more again.

More movement means more contact between people and an increased risk of getting infected with COVID-19. The data cannot say why people are moving around.

"Mobility has steadily increased again, maybe a reflection of the pandemic fatigue that probably pretty much everyone has at this point," he said.

Dr. Bart Harvey, associate medical officer of health, said the modelling was done by Scarsin Forecasting. He echoed some of the comments from Mertz about pandemic fatigue.

"The public has been hearing this from us for 15 months and you can only do what you can only do. We're essentially trying to battle Mother Nature and she's pretty proficient," he said.

He added Scarsin gets the data from people who enable location services on Facebook apps on their smartphones.

Harvey explained the data shows the first lockdown back in March 2020 led to a lot fewer people moving around. But over time, that effect waned.

"Clearly, the less mobile people are, the less risk there is of transmission, the faster the number of cases come down. I mean, I think we have turned the peak on Wave 3, but again, we're going to need to be persistent to get the cases to keep coming down," he said.

The data also forecasts that more and more people will move around, though Harvey said the projections vary each day.

Where are people in Hamilton going during COVID-19?

Paul Minshull, Scarsin's CEO and founder, said Hamilton's data isn't unique compared to the rest of the province and the Greater Toronto Area.

He said the Facebook mobility data is one of multiple bits of information they use in local modelling.

Some of the other data is from Google. It shows where people are going by comparing the median levels of movement between Jan. 3 and Feb. 6, 2020 to the most recent five-week period.

It shows more people are going to residences since pre-pandemic times, but there's been no noticeable change in those levels since late March.

It's important to note the stay-at-home order came into effect in early April, which led to some additional businesses closing and allowing people fewer places to move around. It also means more people would be working from home and doing things from their homes.

Travel to parks, grocery stores and pharmacy has remained relatively stable. The big and small spikes in park data can be attributed to changes in weather according to Google.

Minshull also said the data is all aggregated, which means he and public health can't know where individual people are going.

"We're not Big Brother-ing people," he said.

City modelling projects decrease in cases

Mertz showed Scarsin data that projects a drop in cases over the coming weeks.

"The most plausible scenario is the grey line we see here ... you see a relatively steep decrease similarly to Wave 2 until end of May when we expect the stay-at-home order will be released and then the decline continues," he said Thursday.

He said the city will likely fall between the purple and green dotted lines in the graph.

"Based on this model, we will be at 10 cases per 100,000 [people] by the end of June, which is still more than we would've had between the second and third wave."

258 new cases, 2 more deaths this weekend

Still, public health reported 258 new COVID-19 cases and two more deaths this weekend.

There are 1,154 active cases in the city and 369 people who had the virus have died.

Hamilton's positivity rate is at 12.3 per cent, which means more than one in 10 COVID-19 tests are coming back positive.

The city's reproductive rate is back up, now at 1.12, which means the local case count is growing again.

There are 147 people in Hamilton hospitals with the virus. Seventy-one people are in the intensive care unit.

There have been 18,512 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Hamilton since the start of the pandemic.

New vaccine clinics at Hamilton mosques

There are two new pop-up vaccine clinics at Hamilton mosques according to Ward 3 Coun. Nrinder Nann.

She shared an Instagram post stating adults who live in areas with postal codes that start with L9C, L8W, L8L, L8N or L9K can get vaccinated at the Hamilton Mountain Mosque on Stone Church Road East from Monday to Wednesday and Friday to Sunday between 1 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.

The Hamilton Downtown Mosque on York Boulevard will host vaccinations from May 17 to 23 between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m.

"Just send an email to vaccines@seedsofleadership.ca with your name and phone number & someone will reach out to book you in for an appointment," the Hamilton Centre councillor wrote.

Public health says 208,740 vaccine doses have been administered as of the end of day May 6.

That's 38.8 per cent of eligible people.

42 COVID-19 outbreaks

Meanwhile, public health is reporting 42 outbreaks in the city.

The four new outbreaks include:

• Fortinos at 21 Upper Centennial Pkwy. S. with four staff cases (screened positive for variant of concern).
• Kromet International Inc. on 20 Milburn Rd. with six staff cases (screened positive for variant of concern).
• Freshfhiit Athletic at 300-1051 Upper James St. with one staff and one patron case.
• Shoppers Drug Mart at 377 Highway 8 with two staff cases.

Meanwhile, the outbreaks at Heritage Green Nursing Home, Danmar Pharmacy and SM Cladding Solutions are over according to public health.

And the outbreak at Rebecca Towers has grown to 91 cases.

Brant

The county of Brant has 158 active cases according to data online. There were 36 new cases over the weekend.

There have been 2,907 cases since March 2020 and 20 deaths. There are five people hospitalized with COVID-19.

A total of 2,729 cases have been marked as resolved. 

There have been 60,175 doses of the vaccine administered.

Haldimand-Norfolk

Haldimand and Norfolk Counties are reporting a total of 246 active cases of COVID-19.

There have been 2,440 cases throughout the pandemic. Of those 2,148 have recovered.

The local public health unit has linked the virus to 41 deaths.

There have been 44,107 vaccine doses administered.

Halton

There are 91 more cases in Halton on Sunday, for a total of 16,068 since the pandemic started.

Public health data shows there are 824 active cases.

Forty-one of the new cases reported were in Burlington, which has seen 4,038 cases of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic. There are 256 active cases in the city.

A total of 217 people across the region have died after being infected with the virus, 53 of them in Burlington.

The region has seen a total of 4,462 variant cases.

There have been 222,676 doses of the vaccine administered.

Niagara

Niagara is reporting 95 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday. The region has seen 14,715 cases during the pandemic, including 1,831 that are active.

A total of 396 deaths have been linked to the virus, but 12,488 cases are marked as resolved.

Public health has administered 195,738 vaccine doses and Niagara Health administered 97,861 doses.

Six Nations

Six Nations of the Grand River is reporting 33 active cases as of Friday afternoon. There have been 523 total cases, and 479 are resolved. 

Eleven deaths have been linked to the virus. 

A total of 1,152 people have received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine, while 1,509 people have received both doses.

Ontario logs 3,216 new cases, 47 deaths

Ontario reported 3,216 new COVID-19 cases  and 47 deaths on Sunday.

That marks the highest daily death count since Feb. 19, when 47 deaths were recorded in a single day.

The data shows 8,308 people have died since the pandemic started.

The numbers come with 38,500 tests completed — well below Ontario's capacity. It also puts the daily positivity rate for the province at 7.1 per cent.

As of 8 p.m. on Saturday, 6,144,685 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered, according to Health Minister Christine Elliott.