While the Estrie region maintains is orange alert status this week, regional Public Health Director Dr. Alain Poirier spent a large part of his weekly Monday afternoon update clarifying details about self-isolation that he says are not being understood by the general public.
“A negative test does not liberate you from the obligation to self-isolate,” Poirier said, explaining that even though it has always been the case, people appear to not understand that the virus could remain in incubation even after receiving a negative test result. The director repeated the fact that people who have come into a medium or high-risk contact with an infected person should always commit to the 14 day isolation period regardless of test results.
The public health department will also be launching a new bilingual survey this week for people who have recovered from the virus to get a sense of how public health information and follow up have been received.
The region reported 26 new cases of COVID-19 on Monday, which the public health director said represented a similar statistical plateau to what is currently being seen in much of the rest of the province. Another death brought that total to 37 since the start of the pandemic, and the number of hospitalizations increased by one to 11 while the number of people in intensive care decreased by one, to four.
At the provincial level, Quebec reported 808 new cases bringing the total number of people infected to 100, 922. The total number of deaths increased by ten to 6,153, while hospitalizations decreased by eight to 543, and the number of people in intensive care went down by four, to 93.
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