Dr. Jennifer Russell, the chief medical officer of health in New Brunswick. (Photo: CPAC video capture)
The COVID-19 outbreaks in New Brunswick continue to grow, with six new cases announced by health officials on Monday.
Dr. Jennifer Russell, the province’s chief medical officer of health, said all six cases are related to the ongoing outbreaks in Zone 1 (Moncton region) and Zone 5 (Campbellton region).
Russell said three of the new cases are in Zone 1 while the other three are in Zone 5. Five people remain in the hospital as of Monday, including one person in an intensive care unit.
There are now 76 active cases of COVID 19, the highest number of active cases the province has seen thus far.
“This isn’t the Thanksgiving that we were all hoping for or that we wanted, but as I said, COVID-19 doesn’t take holidays,” said Russell.
Russell said everyone in New Brunswick needs to do their part to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 and keep the case numbers down.
“Barely a week ago there were three active cases in this province and now we have outbreaks in two health zones which include potential incidents of community spread,” she said.
Anyone who travelled to an “orange” zone over the Thanksgiving weekend (Zone 1 or 5) need to observe the requirements of that recovery phase when they return home for 14 days.
That includes self-monitoring for symptoms, limiting your contacts to a two-household bubble, and maintaining a two-metre distance from others.
Russell also reminded residents in those zones that masks are also mandatory in all outdoor public places, in addition to indoor public places. That includes “anywhere other than the yard of a private single dwelling residence where the public gather, such as parks, playgrounds, markets, dog parks, etc.”
“When a phase orange is in place in a zone, we’re really trying to contain things very, very aggressively,” said Russell. “Having people mask indoors and outdoors, then that means that it’s continuous, everybody’s protecting each other. We do know that, even though people can be mingling outdoors, they don’t necessarily always physically distance.”
Residents in all other zones are only required to wear a mask in all indoor public places.
Russell also reminded anyone who regularly travels between here and Quebec that they can get tested twice a week, even if they don’t have any symptoms of the virus.
“I’ve heard many comments about asymptomatic testing versus asymptomatic testing and mass testing, etc. We’re really focused on the cases and the close contacts right now, and the people that are symptomatic,” she said.
Russell said we will likely see more confirmed cases in the coming days, but if everything goes well, those cases will be the people Public Health has already identified as close contacts and they are already self-isolating at home.
“The next 14 days will be critical in terms of how we see things unfolding here. That’s why the next 14 days are really, really important for people to be extremely vigilant,” she said.
Three Schools Will Be Closed Tuesday
Three schools in northern New Brunswick will remain closed Tuesday as officials deal with COVID-19 cases in the school community.
Education Minister Dominic Cardy said Academie Notre-Dame and L.E. Reinsborough School in Dalhousie will have an “operational response day”.
“Staff are going to use this day to roll out their response plans and students will learn from home. This is exactly what we’d always intended because as I’ve been making clear I hope from the beginning of this pandemic, it wasn’t a question of if or when we would have outbreaks like this, but how we would handle them.
Students at Sugarloaf Senior High School in Campbellton will learn remotely Tuesday and Wednesday, as previously announced, after a confirmed positive case last week.
Some people at Janeville Elementary School, near Bathurst, are being made aware of a possible exposure, but Cardy said the school will remain open Tuesday.
Cardy said they are trying to balance keeping schools open as much as possible while also keeping people safe.
“This is a frightening moment when you talk about trying to keep schools open as much as possible. But that’s always been the goal because we can’t afford to lose more than 10 per cent of a child’s education, losing a year or more of schooling, so our goal is to keep the schools open and to keep our schools safe,” he said.
Meanwhile, schools in New Brunswick’s “orange” zone of recovery will have new rules to follow designed to reduce the risk of COVID-19 spread.
Cardy says enhanced mask use will be required by students from kindergarten to Grade 12 when they return to class on Tuesday.
“Masks are going to be required on the bus, indoors and outdoors throughout the day, except when eating or engaged in physical activity. For students in K-to-8, they’ll be able to remove their masks if they’re working silently alone at their desks.”
There are no changes for students attending school in the “yellow” zone of recovery, including in the Saint John and Fredericton regions.
All intramural, interscholastic and extra-curricular activities are also suspended in the “orange” zones until they return to the “yellow” phase.
Cardy also used Monday’s media briefing to ask New Brunswickers to stop spreading misinformation both online and offline.
He said the province is doing its best to provide accurate, up-to-date information through briefings and the COVID-19 dashboard.
“I’d ask for folks who are online to think twice, think three times before you tweet, reshare, post something that you’re not sure about. Do not spread information about people you think might be sick. Do not spread information about stories you might have heard from a friend of a friend about a school or a long-term care home,” said Cardy.
“The way that we can get through this is by making sure the information we share is accurate so that we can make the best decisions based on that information.”
With files from Christina Mulherin and Brad Perry.
