(06-18-2021, 12:39 PM)taylortbb Wrote: We're outliers in the number of delta cases, that's really the big difference. The delta variant is significant more transmissible, that's why it caused such a huge crisis in India. Waterloo is probably the biggest delta outbreak in Canada, and likely in North America. The only thing that could have prevented this is stricter border controls, or more vaccines sooner. Neither of those is within the control of local public health.
I don't think we can entirely blame the borders. I mean, obviously it got into the country from abroad, but the reasons for our outbreak seem to be unexplainable. More people drive in and out of Waterloo Region to surrounding cities and towns every single day...so with that reasoning, our outbreak should be causing outbreaks everywhere from London to Ottawa. Trudeau authorized shutting down flights to both India and Bangladesh back in April and that was extended until June 21 (I don't know if that has since been extended again or not) so not that many people have been coming here from that part of the world. And anyone coming from those countries would be arriving in likely Toronto or another major city and would have to go to quarantine measures at a hotel anyways - as well as have negative tests before their flight and after arrival.
Given that most of the spread is between unvaccinated people (70%+ if I remember?), I am more inclined to blame the fact Public Heath has decided to make booking vaccines independent of the provincial system. It's a shit show trying to get a vaccine here for most people and that has allowed more embers to float around the country/province/region, setting off this chain of events. And we have not had the benefit of being a previous hotspot, so we were not inundated with vaccines like neighbouring areas. Toronto was at the point where they were begging people to come in and closing vaccination centres because nobody needed them, but here we have people waking up at the crack of dawn hoping to book one only to figure out 5 minutes later they lucked out. For whatever reason, we're seeing the blunt of this particular strain. The complete lack of contact tracing has left us all in the dark.
Edit: I totally forgot about the mine outbreak as well. As you mentioned, though, those workers travelled all over the country. Not sure if we can blame the shelter outbreak since it's <90 cases and most shelter residents are not interacting with the general public, where the majority of cases are anyways.