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Canniff hopeful this lockdown will be the last

Add Chatham-Kent Mayor Darrin Canniff to the chorus of voices hoping the current COVID-19 stay-at-home order is the last in Ontario.

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Add Chatham-Kent Mayor Darrin Canniff to the chorus of voices hoping the current COVID-19 stay-at-home order is the last in Ontario.

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The province’s latest emergency order during the pandemic took effect Thursday and requires everyone to stay at home as much as possible while limiting the operations of non-essential retail stores and restricting big-box stores to selling “essential” items.

“We all want COVID behind us. I look forward as well to saying, ‘Is this the last time?’ I’m certainly hopeful it is,” Canniff said during a conference call with media.

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“I’m hopeful with the vaccines as they roll out that we’re going to get more immune as a society and be able to go back to some normalcy. We’re all feeling that way. Hopefully (after) the next four weeks, when we get through this, that we can move on without having to do this again.”

The province tightened restrictions in order to slow the rising numbers of infected people, hospitalizations and intensive care unit admissions fuelled, in part, by the spread of easily transmissible variants of the virus.

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The latest order marks the fourth set of restrictions for Chatham-Kent in 19 days. Since March 21, the region has gone from orange to red to grey under the province’s colour-coded system and now to stay-at-home.

“Now we’re dealing with a top-down series of restrictions which are very severe,” said Dr. David Colby, Chatham-Kent’s medical officer of health. “We can only hope that they will be successful as we race to get people vaccinated.”

Chatham-Kent had only one new case Thursday as its cumulative total rose to 1,665.

Active cases were down to 56, the fewest in Chatham-Kent since there were 46 on March 11.

Colby takes issue with people who think restrictions are the problem and not the solution.

“The strict lockdowns that we have seen in the past were very effective at curtailing the runaway race that we were experiencing at the time,” he said. “That’s why they were reimposed again.

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“No one likes this, but I have confidence that the people of Chatham-Kent, despite the social media grumbling that we’re all aware of, are going to abide by this for the good of everyone.”

Chief administrative officer Don Shropshire said the federal and provincial governments are doing their best to help us.

“It’s not like there’s another path that’s easy to walk,” Shropshire said. “The restrictions that we’ve got right now from the province are intended absolutely to get us out of this pickle as soon as we can. If we don’t think our current provincial government and federal government are concerned about the economic impact, I think we’re fooling ourselves.

“I think they know exactly what the potential impact is and they are trying as best they can to walk the tightrope between making sure people are as safe as they can be but also not killing all economic activity.”

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The province has fine-tuned its restrictions each lockdown to address their impact on businesses, he said.

“They have been trying to make some of those refinements. It’s not like there’s a magic bullet someplace else,” Shropshire said.

Three people, including two Chatham-Kent residents, were in the Chatham hospital Thursday with COVID-19. One was in intensive care.

Two hospital employees were COVID positive and 16 more staff members were also isolating.

Across Ontario, 525 patients were in intensive care because of a COVID-related critical illness.

“I am very concerned that this number continues to climb and likely will continue to climb,” Chatham-Kent Health Alliance president and CEO Lori Marshall said. “When we look back to the experience of the last time when we were in a stay-at-home order, it took probably two weeks before we reached the plateau following that.

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“I would say that all hospital leaders across the province are very concerned about critical care capacity.”

The Chatham hospital could receive patients from overcrowded hospitals, she said.

The new online vaccination booking system (GetYourShotCK.ca ) that began Wednesday booked just more than 2,000 appointments in its first day.

“We are extremely proud of being able to put this all together over the last week to provide this option to residents with the support of our co-workers across municipal departments,” said Jeff Moco, spokesperson for the Chatham-Kent public health unit.

There have been 25,954 vaccine doses administered in Chatham-Kent. Twenty-seven per cent of Chatham-Kent residents older than 16 years have received at least one dose, Colby said.

“Most sources project that about 75 per cent of eligible people will elect to get the vaccine,” he said. “I’m hoping that we can do better than that in Chatham-Kent.”

No new outbreaks were reported Thursday as Chatham-Kent’s total stayed at five.

Hudson Manor retirement home in Tilbury and Meadow Park long-term care home in Chatham combined for three active cases in Chatham-Kent residents. Three workplace outbreaks totalled four active cases in Chatham-Kent residents.

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