Analysis not complete yet says Ranade

Lambton’s Medical Officer of Health has asked Public Health Ontario to see if the fast-spreading variant – found first in the UK – is in the community.

Dr. Sudit Ranade told reporters about his request on a teleconference Thursday.

On Dec. 17, Ranade, told reporters at a news conference number of people infected was “picking up steam” and almost every day since then, the number of people testing positive for COVID-19 has increased by double digits. On Dec. 18, there were just over 500 cases. Ninety-three cases were registered on Dec. 31 alone. Today, less than a month later, there have been almost 1,000 more cases diagnosed.

At the time Ranade told members of the media some of the cases took place at a meat raffle. He also issued an alert, asking people in adult rec hockey to watch for COVID symptoms because a number of hockey players across the county also tested positive.

Lambton went from having some of the lowest number of cases in the province to where it is today – a case rate that is second highest in the province with 44 cases for every 100,000 people.

Ranade said Thursday the large number of cases in a short period of time prompted him to ask public health to take a look.

“At that time, I definitely made the request to see if the if the labs could analyze the samples from those events so that we could see if it was the new variants,” he says adding the results have not come back yet.

“I’m not actually sure how long it takes them to read those things or how they prioritize them but I know that it’s part of a larger effort to understand how much the new variant has come into the picture.”

The variant was first found in Ontario Dec. 26. It is not more deadly, but it does spread rapidly and that is causing worries. The province’s intensive care units are already strained. In southwestern Ontario there were no empty ICU beds for some time

It has been hard for the province to get a handle on how many of the cases we see each day are of the variant. Wednesday, public health officials acknowledged they have found eight more cases.

Ranade said with the rapid rise in Lambton “because of the kind of transmission we saw, we wondered if we should ask the question.”