'Red' is coming but change your behaviour now, regional health official says

Waterloo region could move to the "red" or "control" level of the province's COVID-19 framework within the next week, the region's top public health official says.

The region was moved from yellow to orange as of Monday morning. Dr. Hsiu-Li Wang, the region's acting medical officer of health, says she's been in talks with provincial officials as the local case numbers top 600 in just November.

During a special board of health meeting on Monday, she likened the rapid rise in cases to a speeding train.

"They will be reviewing our situation this week," Wang said Monday afternoon during a media briefing. 

"We are clearly now going into red," she added. "I anticipate that we will be moved to the category that best represents where we are right now, which is red."

Wang says numbers expected to be released Tuesday afternoon will show the number of people hospitalized have tripled in the last 72 hours. On Monday, there were 11 people in hospital. The most recent death in the region reported on Monday was a woman in her 90s who was in hospital.

Wang said currently, case rates in the region are rising at a rate that is slightly ahead of Halton region and Hamilton — areas that were placed in the red zone last Friday.

Curb social interactions immediately: Wang

Wang says people need to act today. That means curbing social interactions immediately to stop the spread of COVID-19, she said. 

Wang encouraged people to stay home and only go out for essential purposes such as work, school, getting groceries, keeping a medical appointment or getting essential, physical exercise. As well, she asked people to limit social interactions to only people in their own households. It means no social gatherings with friends or extended family, even outside, with co-workers or with sports teams.

Wang said she isn't putting more restrictive measures in place herself yet because businesses and the region can access more financial help if the province does it. As well, Wang says she anticipates the province will agree to move the region to red by the end of this week or early next week, and not much will change between now and then.

When asked about potential lockdowns, Wang said she hoped the region could avoid that.

Expect more enforcement

The message around COVID-19 and guidelines is also changing, says regional Chair Karen Redman. The region is asking bylaw and enforcement officers to move away from educating people and start a move to enforcement.

The region will also receive 30 additional inter ministerial health officers from the province to help with enforcement.

"The messaging has absolutely changed," Redman said.

"We take this very seriously," she added, noting lax behaviours in workplaces are of particular concern in the region because it's contributing to the spread of the virus.

She says she has written to the provincial and federal governments to ask for help with contact tracing as cases surge.

"This is a different message that we're sending to the public and it's based on the evidence that Dr. Wang has talked about," she said.

Fine one day, 'deep trouble the next'

Bruce Lauckner, the region's CAO, is the former chief executive officer for the Local Health Integration Network and transitional regional lead for Ontario Health, West Region.

He said this past spring when he was still working in health care, he would see situations where things would be going smoothly and then there would be a sudden spike in cases in a long-term care home. He recalled one situation where 30 people had to be moved out of a home into a hospital within hours.

"We don't want to put our residents in that situation where all of a sudden we turn to our health system and it's overwhelmed," he said. "We quickly could find ourselves in the circumstance of many other jurisdictions, in many other European countries and so on that found themselves fine one day and in deep trouble the next."

He said the cases in the region right now are above what was seen in the spring.