Fourth COVID-19 death reported by Niagara Health this week

As COVID-19 cases continue to decrease in Niagara while thousands of additional doses of vaccine are administered daily, the region’s death toll has continued to grow.

Niagara Health reported the death of a patient with COVID-19 on Wednesday morning — the fourth death this week after two patients succumbed to the coronavirus on Sunday and one died Tuesday.

At least 426 Niagara residents have now died since the pandemic began, based on information from Niagara Region Public Health and Niagara’s hospitals.

About 282 of those deaths occurred since January, including among some people who had received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine.

Niagara’s acting medical officer of health, Dr. Mustafa Hirji, said one of the people who died this week — a resident in the 80-plus age group — had received a single dose of vaccine.

“Unfortunately, it looks like there was infection spreading within that person’s household and that, unfortunately, is probably how they got infected,” Hirji said.

“One thing you consistently see throughout the pandemic is that infection will be introduced into a household and then spread to many other people in the household. You need to really try to limit your contact with other households.”

With 203 active cases of COVID-19 in Niagara, including 10 new cases reported Wednesday, Hirji said there is still enough infection in the region to claim the lives of residents.

“As long as we’re seeing cases, there are going to be a small percentage of people who get hospitalized or put in an intensive care unit, and a smaller percentage who, unfortunately, pass away,” he said.

Even some patients who survive severe infections can experience what has been called long-haul COVID, with symptoms that can last for months such as “brain fog and those sorts of ongoing neurological symptoms that persist for some people,” he said.

Hirji said the vast majority of Niagara’s cases involve the Alpha variant first identified in the United Kingdom. But that is likely changing.

“There are signs that the Delta variant is starting to build up here, and especially given that we’re by Hamilton and Haldimand where probably half their cases are now the Delta variant,” he said of the strain first identified in India.

“Unfortunately, I do think it’s going to be a bigger and bigger threat, ongoing.”

Although a single dose of vaccine has proven less effective against the Delta variant, the protection it offers increases significantly after two doses.

In addition to getting vaccinated as quickly as possible, Hirji said people need to continue with additional efforts to minimize the spread of infection — hand hygiene, mask wearing, physical distancing, avoiding crowds “and limiting social contacts to only those who are really important to you.”

“If we do all of those things, I think we’ll be able to keep cases for the rest of the summer down, get our vaccine numbers up and be in a position that we can actually begin to relax a lot more of the protections,” he said.

As Niagara and the province both set records for the number of doses of vaccine administered Tuesday, with 6,617 locally and more than 227,000 doses administered provincewide, Hirji urged people not to delay scheduling their appointments.

Last week, public health added 20,500 appointments for vaccinations, “and they were all gone within 24 hours.”

“When appointments open up there’s a lot of interest right now to get vaccinated … so don’t delay or hesitate when claiming your appointment because if you don’t someone else is going to be very enthusiastically claiming it instead,” he said.