A stern warning from the Ontario Health Coalition, a group representing health care unions, as Manitoba begins to reopen Friday.
Executive Director Natalie Mehra is urging local residents to avoid all non-essential travel and pleading with Manitobans to not cross the provincial boundary.
Mehra stresses this is a very dangerous time.
“We are transitioning from one pandemic into another pandemic. The pandemic of the new variant could be quite different and much faster moving than even what we’ve experienced to date.”
Mehra believes our region has done a relatively good job to control the spread of the coronavirus.
That’s why she is urging the public to keep doing what we are doing and not let our guard down.
She notes we’ve reached a critical stage.
“The Ford government has not announced any new public health measures to stem the potential tide of this new, much more contagious variant, which also now is associated with higher death rates and certainly has moved extraordinarily quickly.”
Mehra says the risk of contracting COVID-19 and new variants through travel is higher than it was before.
“Nowhere in the north have we seen it as horribly as in Thunder Bay where cases attached to travel ended up spreading, resulting in just a horrible level of death and suffering.”
Mehra points to the Christmas season when we saw a huge spike in cases due to travel and the proceeding second shutdown of the provincial economy.
The first confirmed case of the coronavirus variant first seen in the U.K. was reported in Manitoba this week and it was related to International travel.
Cases have also been reported in northeastern Ontario and Mehra says by staying at home the northwest can remain ahead of the curve.
