Lambton's medical officer of health isn't surprised they've received the first evidence of COVID-19 variants in the community.
Dr. Sudit Ranade told a media briefing Wednesday afternoon that a screen of a COVID case has come back positive for a variant of concern.
"Positive tests undergo screening for the variants and if the screen is positive they go on for further testing," said Ranade. "What we've received is a positive screen for a variant of concern on a positive test for COVID."
The type of variant hadn't been confirmed, and Dr. Ranade said they're investigating further.
"I can't really share further details about an individual case but I can tell you that from the initial appearances it does not look like it's linked to travel or anything like that, and so we think it's just a matter of time before we start identifying more and more variants of concern."
Dr. Ranade said just like influenza there are different strains of coronavirus which are called variants of concern.
"Earlier we probably weren't doing full genomic sequencing on all of the COVID tests to figure out if there were variants but there probably were," he said.
The medical officer of health said most of the variants of concern identified during the pandemic so far are more transmissible but not more severe.
-With files from Josh Boyce