At the press conference on October 22, Premier Legault stressed how important it is to continue respecting the red zone measures, saying “stop looking for ways around the guidelines, please respect them.” While the rate of infection in the Valley seems to be plateauing, there are still a number of active cases. The Montérégie as a whole reposted 1004 new cases in the period of October 15–21, with 18 deaths and 52 hospitalizations. Once again, the Centre d’Hébergement du Comté de Huntingdon (Huntingdon County Hospital) has reported no new hospitalizations or deaths.
This week, it was discovered that 95 people from the Montérégie received false positive COVID-19 test results, with 18 of those patients subsequently being placed in COVID-19 wards at Chateauguay’s Anna-Laberge Hospital and Valleyfield’s Suroît Hospital and being exposed to the virus. The patients in question have since been isolated and will be closely monitored for 14 days. The false positives are said to be the result of broken laboratory equipment, resulting in a “minor misalignment during the analysis” of the samples, according to the CISSS de la Montérégie-Centre.
Direction de la santé publique de la Montérégie reported that over the last week the MRC Jardins-de-Napierville has had 20 new cases, the MRC de Beauharnois-Salaberry has confirmed 34, and the MRC Vaudreuil-Soulanges has 89 new cases. The MRC Haut-Saint-Laurent has reported fewer than 5 new cases in the last week.
As for local municipalities, numbers appear to be stable, with little increase over the last week. Hemmingford and Saint-Chrysostome each have 14 cases, Ormstown has 19, Hinchinbrooke 7, Godmanchester 10, Saint-Barbe 16, Howick 8, Franklin 20, Huntingdon 42, Saint-Anicet 5, and Elgin, Dundee, Très-Saint-Sacrement, and Havelock each have less than 5.
More walk-in testing clinics are planned for the region. On October 26 and 27 a clinic will be held at the Centre communautaire Aimé-Guérin at 5365 boul. Saint-Laurent in Saint-Catherine. On October 28 and 29, one will be held at the Centre Communautaire St-Jean Baptiste & Desjardins at 13 rue Ronaldo-Bélanger in Sainte-Martine. Finally, on October 30 a clinic will be held at the Pavillon des bénévoles at 145 rue Valade in Les Cèdres. All the aforementioned clinics will be open from 9:30 am to 4 pm.
Across the province case numbers have remained fairly steady, with roughly 1000 new cases a day, though the number of hospitalizations and deaths is steadily increasing. For this reason, the Quebec government will wait until next week to make decisions about the potential extension of the lockdown period in areas with red zone restrictions. Premier Legault says ultimately it comes down to “health first, and until we are able to control the virus, everything else comes second.”
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No testing center in ormstown or surrounding areas