With Thunder Bay now under provincial lockdown, Thunder Bay’s Mayor is staying hopeful this will have the intended effect on local COVID-19 case numbers.
Bill Mauro calls our current case count “concerning,” and isn’t surprised the city was placed under lockdown.
However, he but expects some extra medical staff could be coming to the city’s isolation shelter for those with nowhere to stay.
He didn’t provide details, but said they’re looking for “medical and health human resources to support the isolation,” and expects the city will be “in a better position” in that respect in the next few days.
“That, of course, will be beneficial, not only to support those individuals but to relieve pressure on other component parts of the system, the sheltering capacity and impacts on the hospital,” he notes.
Mauro says while some have asked him if the province waited too long to hit the brakes, he’s trying not to second-guess the decision.
“They have more medical information, certainly, than we do, and they use that information to make their determinations, so we’ll see where we are within the next week or two,” he says.
The presence of more contagious COVID-19 variants is also on the mayor’s mind.
After one variant case was found in Dryden, Mauro suggests that makes it even less of a surprise that we are being locked down.
He says if the more infections variants spread into the city, that would put even more strain on the healthcare system.
The lockdown began just after midnight today, and the province has not specified when it will end.
