Today's announced new COVID-19 case amount in Thunder Bay District stands at 41 bringing the total since the start of the pandemic to 1,418 and the current number of active cases is at 273. The District's Chief Medical Officer has suggested that we could be headed back to lock-down though given that the surge over the last two weeks was obviously incubated during the last lock-down one wonders if it will matter. The problem is apparently largely tied to an outbreak among the homeless population in Thunder Bay though given the crowds packing shopping malls and a local ski resort over the last week in the wake of the lifting of the lock-down, it is likely the surge is going to continue. In addition, while the recent surge is tied to the city's homeless population, it remains that there have now been several good-sized outbreaks in local schools the biggest at McKellar Park.
This is a pretty grim situation. We can draw only limited comfort from the fact that the total outbreak to date has resulted in a total case count per 100,000 population as of February 23rd still substantially below that of the province as a whole - at 971 cases per 100,000 versus 2003 cases per 100,000 for the province as illustrated in Figure 1. However, while the provincial total finally seems to be flattening out a bit, Thunder Bay's appears to have picked up steam as Figure 2 illustrates more clearly.
Figure 2 plots plots the daily change in cases per 100,000 for both Ontario and the Thunder Bay District since the start of the pandemic and here one can more clearly see that since the start of January, we have been definitely bucking the provincial trend. While Ontario actually began trending down starting the first week of January, that is when we began to move in the opposite direction. One wonders aside from the shutting of businesses, how much compliance there really has been with requests to not socialize on the part of the general public in Thunder Bay.
This is exceedingly worrisome because even if the surge to date is a result of close contact with some of the other outbreaks - such as those affecting the jail and correctional center - the fact that it appears to be spreading more broadly amongst both the homeless population as well as in the schools makes it ever more likely it will spread further. The flouting of social distancing and safety protocols this last week at local big box stores and the mall as well as the gathering of hundreds outdoors at a local ski resort have merely provided further opportunities. If cases spike even further over the next two weeks, it will be unlikely that we can rein things in. After all, in terms of the current daily increases in cases per 100,000, we are at the peak that Ontario was at in early January and there is no evidence it is slowing down.