Too early to tell if York Region has peaked from the latest wave, MOH says

Too early to say if York COVID cases have peaked York Region's medical officer of health says despite a decrease in COVID-19 cases, it's too early to say if they have peaked.

While York Region health data shows daily case counts are slowly decreasing, its medical officer of health (MOH) still believes it's too early to tell if the region has reached the Omicron peak.

The region reported 420 single-day cases Tuesday compared to the 1,659 on Dec. 31, a single-day record. However, those numbers don't paint the whole picture with testing limitations.

"We don't have a great handle on cases right now, and that's not the metric we're using to gauge where we are in the pandemic, because of course, testing has been so restricted over the past couple of weeks," says Dr. Barry Pakes.

Last month, the province implemented limitations for PCR testing, and because of this, the health unit has turned its attention to test positivity rates which the MOH says is starting to level off.

When you combine the test positivity rates and the wastewater data from last week into this week, Pakes believes it provides a "glimmer of hope."

"It's showing that it's at least plateauing and potentially may be decreasing," says Pakes.

"I think for right now, what we can confidently say is that the acceleration phase that we had been in is really sort of calming down a little bit; we may be getting close to the peak, and our modelling data suggests that as well," he adds.

Despite the glimmer of hope, Pakes says it's still too soon to discuss lifting the restrictions implemented on Jan. 5, which saw the province roll back to a modified step 2 of the Ford government's reopening plan.

According to Pakes, the current restrictions need to be in place for at least the next two weeks, or "until the province has stated they will be in place, maybe even a little longer."

Pakes believes that if the restrictions are lifted too soon, it could result in several grim outcomes. Cases could see a "dramatic increase," with the potential for a high number of hospitalizations and deaths that the province has already seen since the discovery of Omicron.

"Given that this wave is really about the huge numbers of cases leading to huge numbers of hospitalizations, we really do need to look to hospitalizations to decrease before we're really able to ease some of the restrictions," he concludes.

According to sources, the province will gradually loosen restrictions on Jan. 31. An official announcement is expected Thursday from Queen's Park.