Lambton County's medical officer of health believes the local COVID-19 case count is still on the upswing, and the next couple of weeks will be critical to see if interventions are working.
The number of confirmed cases edged up by one to 80 as of 9 a.m. Monday according to Lambton Public Health, with eight deaths.
Dr. Sudit Ranade told Sue Storr on CHOK (103.9 FM, 1070 AM) that of the 16 new cases reported over the weekend, five are connected to the deadly outbreak at Sarnia's Landmark Village retirement home.
"We're now up to 20 total cases affiliated with Landmark, 14 of them are residents," said Ranade. "That is not surprising to us, we've talked about an incubation period of this disease being 14 days, so within the first 14 days after you see a case in any given place, you expect to see more cases, the question then becomes after those 14 days whether or not the isolation measures you put in place are effective."
Dr. Ranade said the most recent death is not linked to Landmark. He said they continue to investigate and contact trace.
"My assessment would be there are going to be fewer and fewer of these related to travel, so even when we look over the past several cases, we looked at the first 65 of them for example, and very few of them were related to travel directly. Some more were related to a close contact of someone who did travel and then there were some that were just from different gatherings and things like that," he said.
Dr. Ranade said he thinks we'll keep seeing more cases locally, the question is the rate and volume of cases, and that depends on people with symptoms and how much people are being tested.
Bluewater Health reported Monday morning that 28 patients are currently in hospital with the virus and 12 are in hospital suspected of having it with tests pending.