These images show what public health officials in Niagara say is the heart in the fight against COVID-19.
At the Niagara Public Health headquarters at Sir Isaac Brock Way, a growing team are working to contact trace, and follow up with confirmed cases in the deadly pandemic that has kept Ontario and the rest of the world in a iron grip for several weeks.
As of last week, the team was around 30 people strong, but Dr. Mustafa Hirji, the regional top doctor said that right now the goal is to have 60 people working the administrative side in the management of the outbreak.
He said the work of tracing down contacts of confirmed cases and ensuring they self-isolate is among the most critical in the operations currently underway in the efforts.
So far, the nurses have caught several presumptive cases and made sure they isolate until having their diagnosis confirmed - work that will continue for the forseeable future to reduce community spread, that has been confirmed in several cases so far.
Therefore, it is not hard to imagine why an outbreak of the virus in the office could be devastating and leave the local effort severely compromised - a threat so serious it has closed all other regional facilities, medical offices exempted.
The team is working under a strict set of office guidelines on social distancing, with marked safe standing spaces, where the teams receive breifings and for other meetings.
The feeling at the office isn’t of a surreal futuristic maze, said Dr. Mustafa Hirji when asked about it, but he acknowledged that the current reality is very much on everyones mind around the office.
“We are just trying to walk the talk about social distancing, and always make sure we stand six feet apart during meetings or conversations,” he told Thorold News.
