CEO of the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit, Nicole Dupuis on November 4, 2021.CEO of the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit, Nicole Dupuis on November 4, 2021.
Windsor

Health unit preparing to shift focus away from COVID-19

The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit will have a plan soon to reopen more programs discontinued during the pandemic.

CEO Nicole Dupuis will present a plan for prioritizing and managing those programs to the health unit's board of directors at its next meeting on May 19.

As COVID-19 becomes a chronic but less severe virus, public health officials are turning their attention to programs put on hold during the pandemic, including vaccination for the human papillomavirus, or HPV.

Before COVID-19, Acting Medical Officer of Health Doctor Shanker Nesathurai said about 60 per cent of 12-year-olds in Ontario received a shot to fight HPV in 2018-19, but that dropped precipitously in the following years.

"In 2020-21, it dropped to five per cent and less than one per cent," he said.

According to the Mayo Clinic, the virus causes cancer, including virtually all cervical cancers and most throat cancers.

Nesathurai said the target is to vaccinate 90 per cent of children.

"If we can not get up to our target, it's estimated that about 1,750 women will die of preventable cancers by 2050," he continued.

The region's high-risk COVID-19 case rate fell almost 12 per cent last week, but the Acting Medical Officer of Health said the burden of disease remained the same as last week in Windsor-Essex.

There were 177.2 cases for every 100,000 residents between April 18 and April 24, a drop of 11.9 per cent. However, the per cent positivity rate, or the percentage of positive tests, didn't change, hospitalization rates were about the same, and there were nine outbreaks compared to eight.

Thursday's epidemiological summary showed a decline in the viral load in wastewater from last week when it reached its highest level since testing started.

Doctor Shanker Nesathurai said he was cautiously optimistic but warned against concluding that COVID-19 has peaked.

The health unit reported a significant drop in the daily COVID-19 case count on Thursday afternoon. There were 39 new cases in high-risk settings, lowering the active caseload to 287 patients. There are 30 active outbreaks being monitored, with 21 of them in long-term care facilities, four apiece in hospital wards and the community, and one in a workplace.

As of 12:30 p.m. Thursday, there were at least 47 people being treated in Windsor-Essex hospitals for the virus. There were 41 at Windsor Regional Hospital, with 27 admitted primarily for COVID-19.  At Erie Shores Healthcare, there were six patients with three admitted for the virus.

Read More Local Stories