The province’s Chief Medical Officer of Health is allaying fears surrounding Newfoundland and Labrador joining the Atlantic bubble this Friday.
Dr. Janice Fitzgerald says the health system is prepared, and the province is in a very different place than it was in March, or even early May with good contact tracing and control measures in place.
She says the incidence of COVID-19 in the Atlantic provinces is very low, with only two new cases in the entire region. She says the infection rate is actually lower in PEI and New Brunswick than it is here.
(Photo via Flickr through Creative Commons.)
Dr. Fitzgerald says reopening the province is based on science and continued good hygiene and physical distancing practices.
She says it is not realistic to expect that the province remains closed until a vaccine is found. The realistic objective is that “we live with COVID-19 using our strategies, and all that we have learned to identify cases and control outbreaks.”
She did offer a stern message, however, to those not exercising physical distancing. Bars and nightclubs reopened last weekend, leading to observations that some people were carrying on as if COVID-19 never existed. She says what she saw this weekend left her “deeply concerned.”
