The province’s Chief Medical Officer of Health is allaying fears surrounding Newfoundland and Labrador joining the Atlantic bubble this Friday tomorrow.
Dr. Janice Fitzgerald says the health system is prepared and the province is in a different place than is was in March, or even in early May with good contact tracing and control measures in place.
She says in the incidence of COVID-19 in the Atlantic province’s is very low, with only two cases in the entire region.
She says the infection rate is actually lower in Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick than it is here.
Dr. Fitzgerald says opening the province is based on science and continued good hygiene and social distancing practices.
She says it is not realistic to expect that the province remains closed until a vaccine is found. The realistic prospective is that “we live COVID-19 with 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 Night clubs 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.”
Courtesy VOCM news.