It was at the beginning of March 2020 when Dr. Mercer first appeared on the Guelph Politicast to talk about COVID-19: What would happen if, and when, COVID-19 came to Canada? A few weeks later, COVID was here. After that, Dr. Mercer became a regular guest on this podcast, stopping by once every quarter to talk about the pandemic, and now we have arrived at this, the final edition of “Still COVID.” Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #330 – Still COVID (Series Finale)”
Over a month since the last time he appeared in front of reporters, Chief Medical Officer of Health for Ontario Dr. Kieran Moore returned to the media studio at Queen’s Park to respond to the sixth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. While he proposed no new mandates, there was a potential for the reconsideration of lifting future mandates at the end of the month, plus the expansion of therapeutics. Continue reading “Dr. Moore Reappears to Try and Calm Fears Around the Sixth Wave”
When Ontario students return from March Break they won’t be mandated to wear masks in the classroom anymore, and neither will anyone else. In an anticipated announcement from Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Kieran Moore, the provincial mask mandate will be lifted on March 21 with some limited exceptions. Keeping each other safe from COVID-19, Moore said, is now in our own hands. Continue reading “Confirmed: The Mask Mandate is Mostly Over March 21”
Although they were not the changes most people wanted to hear, Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health announced Thursday that he was authorizing a couple of positive tweaks, and promised that there would be more to come. For now, extra-curricular activities are back on in Ontario schools, and non-urgent and non-emergency surgeries and procedures should be recommencing soon at hospitals. Continue reading “Moore Says Signs are Good, But Mandates Stay For Now”
In terms of breaking news, it wasn’t that surprising when it was announced Wednesday afternoon that Ontario’s school kids are going back to in-person learning on Monday. Instead, Minister of Education Stephen Lecce and Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Kieran Moore were pressed for some assurances: Will schools be safe when the children return on Monday, and are school’s prepared if they’re not? Continue reading “Lecce and Moore Acknowledge Uncertainty, But Schools Will Still Open on Monday”
The scuttlebutt is that Health Canada will be approving the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for kids between the ages of 5 and 11 on Friday. According to Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph’s Medical Officer of Health on Thursday, public health is ready to roll out vaccines for children once the word is given, and they’re anticipating that the first doses of vaccine will be handed out at the end of next week. Continue reading “Kids Could Be Getting COVID Shots By End of Next Week Pending Approval”
In mid-January, there was a super-spreader event on the University of Guelph campus where over 50 people had gotten together in the townhouse of East Residence for a Frost Week party. A couple of days before that though, there was another serious public health matter related to the pandemic, a case of one of the COVID-19 variants had infected a Guelph resident, and the public never knew it… Until now. Continue reading “Guelph Had a Case of the U.K. COVID Variant. A Month Ago.”
As this week started, the 7-day moving rate of confirmed cases is just a few points above the red line of 40 per 100,000, while the test positivity rate is now at 3.6 per cent. This is good news since it was just a month ago that the numbers were over 115 per 100,000 and five per cent. The numbers are going down, but where does the local medical officer think we stand in all this? Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #260 – Still COVID [Winter Edition] with Dr. Mercer”
On the same day that Ontario officially enters a new 28-day period of lockdown, the Provincial government announced that the mutated strain of COVID-19 that has been ravaging the United Kingdom was detected here in our fair province. Two cases of the new COVID have been detected, and there’s no immediate indication how this new strain has appeared in Canada. Continue reading “First Cases of New COVID Variant Found in Ontario on First Day of Lockdown”
No one in Ontario has been saying “Thank God, it’s Friday,” lately because Friday is the day that the Government of Ontario announces who’s moving up, or more likely down, the colour-coded ladder back towards lockdown. In a rare instance of advocating for greater health restrictions, the Medical Officer of Health for Wellingt0n-Dufferin-Guelph is asking the Province to consider moving our area from orange to red this Friday. Continue reading “WDG Public Health Wants Us to Move into the Red”
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