Today, the Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit (SMDHU) reported eleven new COVID-19 cases in Huntsville.
The cases, and the dates they were reported to the health unit, are:
March 7 – 35-44 Year Old Male, close contact
March 7 – 45-64 Year Old Male, under investigation
March 7 – 65-79 Year Old Female, community-acquired
March 7 – 65-79 Year Old Male, community-acquired
March 6 – 35-44 Year Old Female, close contact
March 5 – 0-17 Year Old Female, close contact
March 5 – 0-17 Year Old Female, close contact
March 5 – 0-17 Year Old Female, close contact
March 5 – 0-17 Year Old Female, close contact
March 5 – 18-34 Year Old Male, close contact
March 4 – 35-44 Year Old Female, under investigation
Two of the cases reported are employees at Rolston’s Home Building Centre. The store posted an update on its Facebook page on March 8 to notify customers. The store has closed temporarily as a precaution for cleaning.
Of the 82 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Huntsville to date, 17 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 39 COVID-19 cases in Huntsville since Jan. 1. Sixty-six per cent of Huntsville’s cases to date (54) have occurred in the past three months of the pandemic. In Lake of Bays, there have been six cases in total, all of which are resolved.
There have been a total of 240 cases reported in Muskoka to date (29 of them currently active) and 6,497 in Simcoe County (500 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.)
Simcoe Muskoka will moved back into the province’s Red-Control zone today, March 8.
For more COVID-19 information from the health unit, visit simcoemuskokahealth.org.
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Hi Brian,
The health unit doesn’t get into that much detail. A Huntsville case is someone who has COVID and is recovering here – could be primary or secondary residence or hospital (although they do note if someone is in hospital here). If they leave the area to recover elsewhere – at a primary residence, with family, at another hospital, etc, they are removed from the list. No information is given about where they may have been infected, unless it’s related to an outbreak. Close contact is someone who likely got their infection from a confirmed case. Community acquired is someone with no known link to another case or to an outbreak – essentially they don’t know how they got infected so it was likely “somewhere within the community”. You can see the health unit’s full list of definitions here: https://www.simcoemuskokahealthstats.org/topics/infectious-diseases/a-h/covid-19. The message that the health unit returns to again and again: be careful everywhere and assume the virus is in the community.
Yikes! Eleven in a week for Huntsville is a lot. Are the 0 – 17 age bracket cases from our schools? Yikes!
When they report a case as being “in” Huntsville, are they saying the infected person actually lives inside the town boundary and contracted the virus inside this area?
Or are they saying the person lives inside the town boundary but contracted the virus elsewhere?
Or are they saying they found a person inside the town boundary, who had the virus but they are from somewhere else, ie. their primary residence is not in Huntsville?
When they say “close contact” is that contact with someone else who lives in the area or is it maybe with someone with whom they had close contact recently, but outside the area or maybe that person was just visiting the area?
Community acquired would maybe mean that the disease was caught IN the area but we know not how or from whom?
It may seem like picking fine points here but if this information is to actually allow me to be more careful, take more care, or maybe not visit certain business locations or just some areas of our town area then I need to know a little more about where not to go. What I see at the moment is too vague to be of much help.
Definitions are the issue here.
So why exactly are we moving OUT of lockdwn when theres so many more cases?