Omicron drives the spread of COVID-19 in Kingston, Ont., as cases rates reach over 350

The health unit reported 359 new cases of COVID-19 in the KFL&A region since Friday, bringing active cases to 908. Just a week ago, the region was standing at 363 active cases.

As COVID-19 cases continue to reach unprecedented heights in the Kingston region, the city’s top doctors spoke to media about what is suspected to be a huge tidal wave of Omicron in the area.

The health unit reported 359 new cases of COVID-19 in the KFL&A region since Friday, bringing active cases to 908. Just a week ago, the region was standing at 363 active cases, the most it had ever seen over the course of the pandemic.

Dr. Piotr Oglaza, medical officer of health for the region, said Omicron is likely making up half of the region’s active cases as of Monday, and will more than likely take over as the dominant strain in the region next week.

Dr. Gerald Evans, a Kingston-based infectious disease expert, agreed.

“There’s no question Omicron will be the dominant variant. It took all of about 24 days in South Africa for Delta to drop to almost zero and for Omicron to rise,” he said.

Oglaza said that so far, the region has 263 suspected cases of Omicron. Although these cases are not confirmed, Evans says genome sequencing of the swabs can be done at local Kingston labs with five to seven days.

“We are one of the few laboratories across the province that has capacity to do whole genome sequencing. We’re doing it as rapidly as we can,” Evans said.

Evans says its unclear why things got so bad so quickly in Kingston, which has generally escaped higher transmission over the last two years. The first person to test positive for the variant likely caught it Nov. 28, and had no travel history.