Essex County Council gets COVID-19 update from WECHU health officials

By Ron Giofu

Members of Essex County Council received an update on the issues surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic from the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit (WE- CHU) and also discussed the possibilities on how to move ahead.

Dr. Shanker Nesathurai, acting medical officer of health with WECHU, and CEO Nicole Dupuis appeared at last Wednesday night’s virtual meeting to provide the update as it pertains to the region.

Nesathurai told County Council that “COVID still remains a challenge in the Windsor-Essex health district.” He said approximately 11,500 died of COVID-19 in the province as of last Wednesday night’s meeting with about 550 in Windsor-Essex County. Fifty-three people died locally in January, 27 people died in December and seven last November.

“Death is at least one measure of COVID-19 in the community,” he said.

About 40 per cent of people on a ventilator across the province was due to COVID-19, he told County Council members last Wednesday.

“My first point is when we look at the metrics and the data, COVID still remains a significant challenge,” said Nesathurai. “My second point would be that the current level of burden of disease is in part related to the public health measures that have been instituted, the vaccination status and the co-operation and commitment of the people of the health district.”

Nesathurai said some provincial health measures were relaxed as of Jan. 31 and predicted it would take a least a week to see the impact on the burden of disease. “At this point in the pandemic, we don’t have testing capacity. If we don’t have testing capacity, then we can’t use case counts, meaning the number of people who actually tested positive as a clear metric of disease, because we are restricting testing to a subset of the community,” he said. “As we move forward in the pandemic, we’ll have to use other measures such as hospitalizations, the number of people in ICU, the number of people on a ventilator as well as data from wastewater sampling to make an assessment on the burden of disease.”

The strategy moving forward, Nesathurai added, is to try to reduce and manage the burden of disease so people who are ill don’t “saturate” local hospitals.

“I think the data would suggest that Omicron is probably causing, on an individual level, less severe disease but, in the aggregate, more people are getting infected because it is more infectious therefore the proportion of people that present severe disease, the people that need hospitalization and ICU admission or ventilator support, is actually the risk we’re trying to mitigate,” he said.

Nesathurai added there is “still a senseless burden of death” in unvaccinated people and he urged people to get vaccinated, if not for themselves then for their families. He said people are dying in the prime of the lives from a “preventable disease.” Many of those who are vaccinated and dying have other significant health issues already, he added.

“One thing I think we have to consider as a culture is how do we return to a level of normality,” he said. “I don’t believe, in looking at the data overall, that COVID is going away. If it was going away, it would go away by now. It’s been two years. I think any observer would say it’s likely we’re going to have Omicron and other variants going forward.”

Things may not go back to the way they were prior to March 2020 for a while, he cautioned, and public health measures may have to be modulated to whatever risks are out there. He also said that as things normalize, how the hospital system can be reorganized to manage surges and additional demands.

“I always remain an optimist. As a culture, we got through HIV, a disease that killed virtually everyone who got it and is now managed as a chronic illness,” he said, adding TB is also now more of a manageable illness. “I remain optimistic that with the right suite of policy choices, public health measures and rational decision making, we can move on as a community and as a culture.”

Amherstburg Deputy Mayor Leo Meloche noted he lost his wife due to cancer three years ago and before she passed away, they came to the realization the radiation was worse than the disease.

“The cure was killing her faster than the disease,” he said.

Meloche drew parallels to what is happening now with the virus. He said his mother entered a longterm care facility that faced lockdowns shortly after she entered “and I see the same thing again. The cure is worse than the disease in the mental health aspects and the care of these individuals and the separation from the families. How do we try and balance that?”

Nesathurai stated health officials try to balance risks versus benefits and “in certain cases, the potential cure is worse than the underlying illness.” He said there are “assertive steps” needed to ensure the hospital system doesn’t get overwhelmed and believes everyone has to discuss the “appropriate goals of treatment” and what is trying to be accomplished by them.

Kingsville Mayor Nelson Santos asked if there is any pre-planning or additional reviews being considered if more variants or other issues happen so that the public can be educated on measures as well as to avoid future closures.

Nesathurai said WE- CHU has shared “a reasonable suite of approaches” and evaluation is needed as to what the goals are for society. Some of the questions that have to be asked in that evaluation would be tough questions, he believed.

“I think moving forward, one of the difficult decisions we’re going to have to make is what is the burden of disease we’re willing to accept in the community, what are the level of hospitalizations we’re willing to accept? Are we willing to assign the resources to build and have the bed capacity to take care of the patients?” he said. “I think it’s going to be a combination of all of those things.”

LaSalle Deputy Mayor Crystal Meloche wondered about more PCR testing and the accuracy of rapid testing.

Nesathurai said laboratory testing is managed by the province but they should do “everything we can humanly do to increase testing capacity” in the province. He said he remains hopeful testing capacity will be expanded going forward.

Warden Gary Mc- Namara, who also chairs the WECHU Board, thanked the staff members and said, “We owe a great debt to our public health officials across the country and across the world for bringing good science, good judgement and good leadership. I could just imagine if we didn’t have the expertise on the ground in all of our communities, what the end game or results would have been.”