The WindsorEssex County Health Unit is reporting 41 new cases of COVID19
The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit is reporting 41 new cases of COVID-19.
The cases announced include 25 in the agri-farm sector, 14 in the community, one local health care worker and one case remains under investigation.
During his daily briefing on Monday, Medical Officer of Health Dr. Wajid Ahmed spoke about the province's decision to delay the stage three announcement until Wednesday. He says the local health unit has had discussions with the province on the subject.
"It's a provincial decision to begin with but we did ask the province to look at some of the consideration into other areas that are contributing to this spread especially in stage three or even in other countries and jurisdictions that has gone past stage three or similar to stage three directions," says Dr. Ahmed.
He says the region has done what he calls a "pretty good job" handling the pandemic after the first case was identified in Canada six months ago.
"I think we definitely learned many things during this pandemic and the congregate living setting, the agri-food workers, I think that definitely has challenged us a lot and it will continue to challenge us in the next couple of months," he says.
When asked to be more specific about the agri-farm sector, Dr. Ahmed says when the health unit talks about those cases, staff is also referring to local workers who work in the sector.
"We are doing our part to make sure that the message is very clear, that it's not just the temporary foreign workers we are concerned about, we're concerned about everyone," says Dr. Ahmed.
The health unit reports that there are three long-term care or retirement homes in outbreak status.
There are also 11 workplace outbreaks reported, six are in the agri-farm sector and five are in the manufacturing sector.
Windsor-Essex now has 2,221 cases and 69 deaths since the pandemic began.
— With files from AM800's Rusty Thomson