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York Region calls for travel crackdown to deal with high number of COVID-19 U.K. variant cases

Region has highest concentration of variant in Ontario, possibly Canada

Yorkregion.com
Jan. 29, 2021
Kim Zarzour

With what appears to be the highest concentration of COVID-19’s U.K. variant in the province -- and possibly the country -- York Region council is calling on the federal government to immediately put a lid on international travel.

The region’s mayors and regional councillors agreed to send a strongly worded message to the federal government to restrict or ban travel from countries with high volumes of highly contagious variants.

They also want to require passengers on international flights to have additional mandatory testing on arrival in Canada.

A further motion, requiring travellers to attend supervised quarantine facilities, was not passed.

Daily cases of the coronavirus are on the downward trend in York Region, but an unusually high number people testing with the super-contagious mutation is "very worrisome", Dr. Karim Kurji, the region’s medical officer of health, said Jan. 28 in his weekly briefing to York Region council.

Aside from the institutional outbreaks of the variant in Simcoe-Muskoka, York appears to be grappling with one of the largest community transmissions of the variant.

Fifteen cases in nine family groups have surfaced in Markham, Vaughan, Richmond Hill, Newmarket, King and Georgina.

Only two of those cases are attributed to travel -- one from the Maldives and another from the U.K., Kurji said.

There is concern that the variant has shorter incubation periods, more transmissibility, possible transmission beyond 10 days and may be associated with greater severity, he said.

So far, it appears the vaccines work well on the variants, but questions remain about vaccine efficacy with other variants and whether it’s possible to catch one variant after having already had COVID.

York Region has created a special unit that focuses on these particular cases and their close contacts, he said.

Kurji said he still believes international travel is a main driver of increased cases in the region. Asking travellers to quarantine has not worked well, he said.

The province is working to restrict travellers, but continuest to be reports of high numbers of travel-related COVID-19 cases arriving in Canada weekly.

"That’s not acceptable," Kurji said. "The public health system doesn’t have the capacity to be able to constantly follow up on these folks … We’ll all be paying for this in terms of increased lockdowns."

Businesses are frustrated, Markham Mayor Frank Scarpitti said.

"They are following restrictions and seeing the tap hasn’t been turned off and people continue to travel and expose communities."

Scarpitti’s motion, urging Canada to impose more travel restrictions and testing, was passed unanimously.

"This is about not allowing people to have the luxury of travelling to other parts of the world while we’re facing restrictions here," he said.

"It may inconvenience people, but unless you have an emergency, you shouldn’t travel until we defeat this virus," Vaughan Regional Coun. Mario Ferri added.

There was some discussion about a motion by Richmond Hill Regional Coun. Carmine Perrelli to ask the province -- again -- to move the region out of lockdown, but councillors agreed to put the idea on hold, following advice from the medical officer, to see whether case counts go up or down in coming days.

"We’re not actually seeing a lot of evidence from a lab perspective that the variant population has exploded," Kurji said, adding it is difficult to predict what impact the variant will have.

So far, the trends are promising, he said.

Vaccine rollouts are expected to proceed quickly once supplies are available, and he is optimistic that "once the mass immunizations are in place and we’ve covered a good portion of our population, there is every reason to believe that … the bulk of the pandemic will be behind us."

Records show York Region cases rose in late December and early January, hitting a peak at more than 500 cases Jan. 9, when the region surpassed the City of Toronto, but those numbers have been declining since the province declared a second emergency and stay-at-home order.