For the past few weeks, people around the world are being told that they must do everything they can to “flatten the curve.”

The good news is that, according to Kingston, Frontenac and Lennox and Addington medical officer of health Dr. Kieran Moore, it appears to be working.

Moore said Kingston and the surrounding counties have so far managed to avoid an exponential growth of COVID-19 infections, which was the biggest fear of public health and hospital officials. Instead, the rate of local infections has “plateaued” at a manageable trickle of new patients just about every day.

That is very good news, Moore said, but it does not mean that social distancing measures can be relaxed. Everyone has to keep doing what they have been to make sure the coronavirus stays under control.

“Right now we are receiving an average of two to three positive cases per day. But the virus would like to see the number of cases tripling every three to four days. … We are not seeing that. Instead, we are seeing three cases (every day) who were all known contacts (of an infected person). We haven’t seen it propagating freely outside of those circles,” Moore said.

“Our cases are plateauing and staying steady all because everyone in our community is doing the right thing: they are practising physical distancing, they’re staying with their family units, washing their hands, covering their coughs, and getting tested if they develop symptoms (if they qualify).

“We are getting good information, and I am confident now that we have reached that plateau. But we can’t let our guard down.”

Public health has a model for how it expects the coronavirus’s spread will proceed if everyone keeps up their responsible behaviour. The model predicts that the number of cases will reach between 56 and 69 cases this month and hold steady at that number into early May.

“We are reaching a peak at the beginning of May, and from there we hope to see a slow decent as long as we maintain the social and physical distancing. Everyone in the community has a role to play,” Moore said.

The danger of relaxing any of the social distancing measures that have been put in place to control the spread of the coronavirus is that it could cause a spike of new cases as people begin mingling more freely once more.

Moore said they are currently seeing this happen in mainland China as the government there begins easing its own restrictions in the hopes of restarting the economy. Public health officials in Kingston and the rest of Canada will be closely watching how those efforts go to try to learn as much as they can for the time when measures are relaxed here.

That could still be quite a way off yet. But even when it does happen, Moore warns, some measures will remain in place, so things won’t return to the way things were before the pandemic for quite some time.

“We will look at what we can do to put some basic structures in place that will allow us to restart our economy and allow our communities to maintain a somewhat normal lifestyle,” he said. “But it can never go back over the next year and a half to what we have been doing previously. We will have to keep maintaining physical distancing, covering coughs and washing our hands, staying home when we are sick.”

In the meantime, however, the concern is not to allow the religious holidays and the warmer weather over the next few weeks undermine the control over COVID-19 the community has fought so hard for, he said.

Moore is asking people to put off any religious celebration that involves anyone outside one’s own household.

As for people itching to head out to their cottages, Moore said that it is OK as long as they are very close by. Travelling across the province is to be avoided, so if someone has a seasonal residence within the region, they can go distance themselves there. But no one should be coming in or leaving the area, which could spread the virus across Ontario.

ahale@postmedia.com

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