Hamilton is home to two of Ontario’s COVID hot spots
Two Hamilton neighbourhoods are among 50 COVID hot spots in Ontario.
L8N in downtown Hamilton and L8V on the east Mountain cracked the province's top 50 for the highest per cent of tests coming back positive during the week of Nov. 22 to Nov. 28, in an analysis by Ontario research institute ICES.
It comes as Hamilton continues to see high numbers of new infections daily including 90 on Monday to bring the number of active cases to 637 - breaking the record of 604 set Sunday.
The city also reported three more seniors with COVID have died - two from long-term care home Grace Villa and one not connected to an outbreak. It brings the city's pandemic death toll to 101 or three per cent of cases.
We've now topped the 100-death mark," said Dr. Elizabeth Richardson, Hamilton's medical officer of health.
Record-breaking case counts provincewide over the last four days including 1,925 new infections Monday are primarily in locked down Toronto and Peel, as well as the red zones including Hamilton.
The trends are concerning," said Dr. David Williams, Ontario's chief medical officer of health. We're seeing those trends mostly in our lockdown and red zones."
Lockdown is still looming despite Hamilton getting a reprieve from the province Friday.
Absolutely we're still in danger of getting there," said Richardson. We are at very high numbers. We are very concerned about ... what it could mean."
She said if things continue to get worse," there will be further discussions about locking down Hamilton, which is ultimately decided by cabinet.
In the meantime, Richardson brought in additional restrictions, such as capacity limits and screening to shopping malls, retail businesses and workplaces, which were implemented from Saturday to Monday.
We're going to need to give it a little bit of time to see whether or not this is working," said Richardson.
Mayor Fred Eisenberger said he's quite honestly frustrated" by the increasing case counts that saw the weekly incident rate hit 83, compared to 50 two weeks ago.
We've got to stop this virus," he said. The vaccine isn't here yet and it may not be here for some time."
Hamilton has started planning for the vaccine roll-out, determining venues that will be used and where freezers are located that can store the immunization at -70 C. None of these details have been made public yet
Those kind of freezers are used for research purposes, so we do have some here in Hamilton," said Richardson. We have identified some of the sites where we might be able to do vaccination."
Meanwhile, the city continues to struggle with 3.2 per cent of tests coming back positive, which is above the threshold where case and contact management alone can bring the numbers down.
Two Hamilton neighbourhoods had rates more than double that, with L8V reporting the province's 45th highest per cent positivity rate at 7.9 per cent and L8N coming in at No. 50 with 7.5. The highest was M1X in Toronto at 20.5.
L8V on the Mountain stretches from just east of Upper Wentworth Street to just east of Upper Gage Avenue and from the Kenilworth Access to Limeridge Road East.
It is home to Grace Villa, where 87 have been infected with COVID and nine have died. The latest deaths are a woman in her early 90s who died Dec. 2 and a woman in her late 70s who died Dec. 6.
The other COVID death reported Monday was a man in his late 80s who died Dec. 6.
L8V also includes Juravinski Hospital, where there are three ongoing outbreaks at E3, B3 and F5 wards after 13 patients, nine staff and two students tested positive. However, it's unlikely their infections would be recorded in this neighbourhood unless they lived at the hospital.
The 7.9 per cent is the highest rate recorded since Aug. 30 for this neighbourhood. Its previous high was 4.1 per cent from Oct. 11 to Oct. 17.
In contrast, L8N has been one of Hamilton's hot spots before with a high of 8.6 per cent from Nov. 1 to Nov. 7. It stretches from the Claremont Access to King Street East and from James Street South to just east of Wentworth Street South.
This neighbourhood has seen two large long-term care outbreaks, including 53 cases at Hamilton Continuing Care and 42 cases at Baywoods Place.
Aside from the outbreaks, the rates in these hot spots don't necessarily mean the virus is spreading there.
The challenge is that's not always where the transmission is actually happening," said Richardson. It can be happening in workplaces ... and we continue to see it ... throughout the community in terms of socializing."
Hamilton has an increasing number of workplace outbreaks, accounting for six of the ongoing 23.
Joanna Frketich is a Hamilton-based reporter covering health for The Spectator. Reach her via email: jfrketich@thespec.com