There's a new COVID-19 outbreak in Chatham-Kent on top of another outbreak declared in the municipality earlier this week.
Chatham-Kent Medical Officer of Health Dr. David Colby said the new outbreak is at Tilbury Manor Nursing Home and involves two cases. Colby said the outbreak at the long term care home in Tilbury was declared on Wednesday just as a precaution and everyone at the facility will be tested in about a week.
"I don't expect that this is going to be a problem at all because of the high vaccination rate there," Colby said about Tilbury Manor Nursing Home. "We're taking the precautions to be certain but I really don't anticipate this is going to be a big situation."
The other outbreak was declared at CLASS Shared School Services on Tuesday because two students on a school bus at Tecumseh Public School tested positive for the virus.
A third outbreak declared at an unidentified place of worship somewhere in the municipality on Monday has jumped from two cases to 11 cases. Dr. Colby believes it will stabilize at around 11.
Colby said local public health officials found links to the place of worship when they went back to review the cases and that's why the number of cases increased. He added there could be a couple of more new cases at the place of worship but not many more are expected.
"When we took another look at some of our cases, we found that they were in fact associated with that place of worship. The number went up but it doesn't reflect a whole lot of new cases coming all at once."
Chatham-Kent Pubic Health reported 17 new cases on Thursday and seven resolved cases to bring the total number of active cases up to 52. Three residents are in the hospital with the virus, which is the same number as Wednesday.
Jeff Moco with the public health unit also noted that 2,200 residents have received a third dose of the COVID-19 vaccine as of November 13, 2021. He said 1,500 of them are 70 years old or older.
"Our larger numbers of 70+ will start to become eligible in the next couple of weeks through the month of December where we suspect greater uptake will occur over the weeks ahead," he said.
Colby noted the area with the lowest COVID-19 vaccination rate is postal code N0P, which is the Ridgetown and Dresden areas. He added the health unit continues trying to increase the overall vaccination rate across Chatham-Kent. Currently, the municipality has 83 per cent of the population 12 and older fully vaccinated and 86 per cent with at least one dose.