Hamilton travel-related COVID cases remain low as variants spread elsewhere
Travel-related COVID cases are on the rise in Canada - but not in Hamilton.
Health Canada data shows Canada recorded its highest number of travel-related cases since the beginning of the pandemic in December, with 486 cases connected to foreign travel. That's more than double the number of cases in October.
But in Hamilton, travel-related cases remain low.
Does this mean Hamiltonians are heeding public health advice and not travelling? Maybe. But the real answer is more complicated.
For one thing, Health Canada's data looks at foreign travel. Hamilton's includes anything out of province - and up until at least August, it included out-of-city travel-related cases. (The province changed its definition of travel at some point between then and now - public health says it doesn't know when). This nuance suggests our international travel cases could be even lower than the already-low numbers suggest.
As of Monday, Hamilton showed just two travel-related cases in the past 10 days, or 0.3 per cent of 700 cases. That's down from 10 per cent of all Hamilton cases in August. In fact, to date, the city has recorded just 149 travel cases - less than two per cent of more than 9,000 cases - throughout the entire pandemic.
While Hamilton public health did not provide a breakdown of international versus domestic travel, spokesperson Jacqueline Durlov said: Generally speaking, it's largely international travel still."
Of note, not all COVID cases involving people who travel end up classified as travel-related."
For instance, Dr. Bart Harvey, Hamilton's associate medical officer of health, said public health looks at a person's travel history 14 days prior to symptom onset. But if it was clear the person caught the virus at home - say, while at work - that person would not be a travel-related case. Public health makes the call on who ends up in which category.
The number of people who got sick from the few Hamiltonians who did travel is also unknown.
Health Canada, for instance, is able to say 1,258 people tested positive after they had close contact with a recent traveller in December. Hamilton public health can't give comparable data.
The big concern now, of course, is that COVID-19 variants will enter Canada via travellers.
On Friday, the federal government announced new measures intended to crack down on international travel and limit the spread of variants, including mandatory testing at airports and a mandatory hotel quarantine at the traveller's expense until test results arrive. International travellers also have to self-isolate for 14 days after arrival.
But the new stricter measures will only do so much for so long, said Dr. Marek Smieja, an infectious disease physician and McMaster University professor of pathology and molecular medicine.
It only makes sense while some other part of the world either has more COVID than we do or has somehow a nastier COVID than we do," Smieja said. If we all had the same level of COVID, whether it was low or high, importing it from another country may be no higher risk than driving from Toronto to Hamilton."
Unfortunately, the variants are already here.
On Monday, Ontario confirmed its first case of the South African coronavirus variant in a Mississauga man who did not travel. Another variant, the extra contagious B.1.1.7 - first found in the U.K. - is already here and is spreading. Toronto public health reported Monday that a COVID outbreak at a Toronto meat production plant is linked to the U.K. variant and also tied to a deadly Barrie nursing home outbreak.
-With files from the Canadian Press
Katrina Clarke is a Hamilton-based reporter at The Spectator. Reach her via email: katrinaclarke@thespec.com