- by Anne Finlay-Stewart, Editor

"Covid is not going anywhere. We are not going to zero," said Dr. Ian Arra, Grey Bruce's Medical Officer of Health, on this morning's Open Line on CFOS radio.

"Down the road we're going to see cases of COVID-19," Arra continued, adding "With the vaccine, the consequences will be way less severe."

News Director Matt Hermiz observed that we've been conditioned to look at the numbers and think "more cases=more hospitalizations= more deaths", but Dr. Arra says that link is not there any more, because of vaccines.

People have been checking the numbers provided by public health authorities daily, and Dr. Arra says we need to be intentional in breaking that habit. "So perhaps not focussing on them is the message".

On this tack, after 531 daily situation reports and another 395 media releases from Public Health on Covid, we are going to change how we report to you.

First, we'll provide you with information about Covid services or changes you may need to know - like the third covid shot announced today and vaccine schedules.

Second, we will share Covid information from school boards and organizations advocating for children, the elderly or other vulnerable sectors.

And third, we will begin to increase our coverage of other dimensions of community health that have received too little of our attention over the past year and a half, such as food security, safe housing, mental health and harm reduction.

For today - there were no new cases identified in Grey-Bruce (not surprising for a Tuesday as the testing centre is not open Sundays). 

The vaccine schedule is here, and for those who can't break the number habit cold turkey, all the daily reports and links to provincial reports are on the Health Unit website.