2nd straight day with no new cases of COVID-19 in N.L.

Newfoundland and Labrador has no new cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday for the second straight day, after a new case on the weekend bumped up the province's total caseload to 273.

The province's two active cases are both related to travel. Since testing began in March, 41,471 people have been tested for the coronavirus, with 341 of those in the last 24 hours.

Health Minister John Haggie provided the update Tuesday afternoon at the provincial government's weekly live update, held a day earlier than usual to accommodate the provincial budget's release Wednesday.

During the briefing, Haggie contrasted Newfoundland and Labrador's pandemic situation with the rest of the country and the world.

Quebec has had two straight days with more than 700 new cases each, with Ontario announcing 700 new cases Monday, a single-day record for that province. Newfoundland and Labrador has done well in complying with public health orders that have allowed many facets of normal life to resume, he noted, but people can't get complacent.

"We cannot, however, let our guard down, and simply because the news is most days reassuring, we can't forget the important public health measures that Dr. Fitzgerald and the panels here over the last few months have been emphasizing," he said.

Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Janice Fitzgerald, normally a staple of such briefings did not attend Tuesday, as at last week's briefing officials announced she was taking some time off.

There has been a resurgence of cases in areas where the virus had been thought to be under control, Haggie noted, as Newfoundland and Labrador appears to be today.

"We are in an area where we feel COVID had been controlled, but we still see sporadic cases, and we need to be ever on our guard about the possibility that this could come here in numbers such as we saw in March and April of this year."

Relaxed rules for rotational workers likely to continue

In early September, Fitzgerald announced a trial period of easing self-isolation timelines for rotational workers who return home from outside the Atlantic bubble.

Workers can call 811 and take a free COVID-19 test as of Day 5 of their self-isolation.

The trial period is supposed to end around Oct. 7, Haggie said Tuesday. At that time, public health will look at the results, but it will continue for now.

As for allowing more people to be subject to those relaxed regulations — like other travellers, who currently have to self-isolate for 14 days upon returning from outside the Atlantic bubble — Haggie indicated there isn't a rush to do that.

"Rotational workers travel because their job requires them to," Haggie said, noting the travel exemption process is still in place.

"If you don't need to be traveling, you probably shouldn't be travelling at the moment," he said, referencing Canada's "big four" — British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec — where cases are climbing.

"If I were a betting person, I would feel that public health would not be inclined to relax too much in that regard at the moment because of those numbers," he added.

Future planning, PPE stockpile

Asked how the province is preparing for another surge, Haggie said there is a well-trained corps of public health nurses and communicable-disease nurses who will do the contact tracing.

"If you look at other jurisdictions' experience, and if you look at our own with the clusters that we've had, we have promptly identified contacts and promptly had them tested, with metrics that are as good as, if not the best, in the country, and that [is] what has enabled us to bring COVID under control in that fashion," he said.

Should another outbreak occur, necessitating stricter public health restrictions, Haggie said, the province's preference would be to take a regional approach to target the affected area of the province.

"That's one of the changes, one of the learnings that we've had as a result of our own experiences with COVID, but also watching other jurisdictions," he said.

"It may be possible to do it by community or by region, and that is a prominent idea at the moment in public health response, should that happen."

The Canadian Medical Association has raised concerns about the supply of personal protective equipment should a second wave arrive, but Haggie said Newfoundland and Labrador is in "a pretty good place" right now.

"We have used a process of inventory control to allow us to keep a stockpile, for want of a better word. It's not the way it was done before, which didn't work, quite frankly. Basically, the supplies come in at one end of a big warehouse and go out the other and move down the warehouse, and that size of warehouse allows you your surge capacity," he said.

Orders from as far back as January have been arriving, said Haggie, and there are a couple of domestic suppliers now as well.

"At the moment, the demand is manageable, so that we can build up this inventory hold, which will allow us to deal with a surge in the future."

Online booking system, pharmacy tests? Not yet

Since pharmacists will administer flu shots, could they also be called upon to help people get tested for COVID-19?

"We would not rule out any options.… I think the challenge around testing remains the criteria," Haggie said.

"The rest of it then is the issue of accreditation and laboratory performance and these kinds of things. So those are discussions that have only been mentioned, really, rather then entertained."

While the provincial government has boasted about the number of services now available online, there is no timeline for when a self-scheduling one for COVID-19 testing would be available.

"In the fullness of time, I would love to see them move to online self scheduling, but we're not quite there yet, certainly not for the levels of demand that we generated when school restarted," Haggie said.

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