Today, the Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit (SMDHU) reported three new COVID-19 cases in Huntsville, bringing this month’s total to 17 cases, the highest monthly total since the pandemic began.
The newest cases are an 18-34 year-old male who is a close contact of another case, a 35-44 year-old male who is a close contact of another case, and an 18-34 year-old female whose case is under investigation.
In his COVID briefing on Tuesday, March 9, Dr. Charles Gardner noted that some of the recent Huntsville cases are related to family clusters. There was also a small retail-setting outbreak at Rolston’s Home Building Centre—to date, the health unit has attributed three cases to this outbreak.
It’s unknown how many of the cases reported in Huntsville in March are variants of concern (VOC)—with few exceptions, the health unit doesn’t specify the municipalities where the variants of concern have been identified. However, within Muskoka there have been 31 cases identified as variants of concern as of March 11—one confirmed as the UK B.1.1.7 and the rest having screened positive for a VOC. (Variant testing is a two-step process with the screening occurring first, followed by whole genome sequencing upon positive screening results. Delays in reporting of up to 10 days are possible for the initial screening, while WGS can take between three and six weeks depending on volume and laboratory capacity, according to the health unit.)
Simcoe Muskoka has the highest number of variants of concern in Ontario. Most of the VOC cases in Simcoe Muskoka have been in Simcoe County. To date 236 cases have tested positive for the COVID-19 variant of concern UK B.1.1.7 (UK), seven cases have tested positive for the P.1 variant of concern (Brazil), one case has tested positive for the B.1.351 variant of concern (South Africa), and an additional 491 cases have screened positive for a VOC and are awaiting confirmatory testing.
Of the 86 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Huntsville to date, 16 are active. None are currently in hospital in Huntsville. Two people have died from the disease in Huntsville, as well as a third person in Muskoka Lakes.
There have been 43 COVID-19 cases in Huntsville since Jan. 1. In Lake of Bays, there have been six cases in total, all of which are resolved.
There have been a total of 250 cases reported in Muskoka to date (24 of them currently active) and 6,592 in Simcoe County (394 active). (For a full list of Huntsville and Lake of Bays cases to date, and other COVID-19 updates for the area, visit our COVID-19 page.)
For more COVID-19 information from the health unit, visit simcoemuskokahealth.org.
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