Hamilton ends state of emergency for COVID-19

Hamilton has ended the state of emergency it implemented more than two years agobecause of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The state of emergency was announcedin April2020 and allowed the city to redistribute staff as needed.

"We have reached a place where we can manage the virus within our community and our health-care system without the need for broad mandates and requirements to close lower-risk settings,"Michelle Baird, the city'sCOVID-19 operations chief, told reporters on Tuesday afternoon.

"We are not going to see COVID go away completely likely anytime soon, and so all of us just need to understand what does it mean to live our life in a world of COVID."

The city staff mask mandate will be lifted on May 25. The city will resumein-personpublic events and city council meetings will start being held inin a hybrid format that same day.

Five days later, committee meetings will also begin being held in a hybrid format, along with advisory committee meetings.

The emergency operations centre won't be disbanded but will shift to a monitoring role, the city said. The last regular COVID-19 verbal update to the general issues committee will take place on May 18.

The city's vaccine mandate for employees isn't changing, according to city officials.

Mayor Fred Eisenberger said during a media briefing on Tuesdaythe decision to end the state of emergency made officialthis morning wasn't takenlightly.

"I do want to recognize the importance of this moment, that has taken ustwo and a half years to get to," he told reporters.

"We've seen friends and family fall ill, we've seen families and others lose loved ones ... we've seen our front-line workers and health-care system pushed to the brink, and we've seen the community come together to look after another through what has been the worst public health emergency in the past 100 years."

State of emergency lifted but pandemic isn't over

Baird said the state of the COVID-19 is improving on a local level and the city has passed the peak of the most-recent wave, but the pandemic isn't over.

People now have the tools to make decisions for themselves, pointing to vaccines, masking and staying home, she added.

To date, there have been57,343 COVID-19 cases reported by Hamilton Public Health and 550 deaths. The most recent death was recorded Tuesdaymorning, according to local public health data.

Hamilton hospitals are reporting a total of 135 patients with COVID-19 and 299 staff in quarantine.

While the city's wastewater data appears to show transmission is decreasing, the levels are still higher than they were in the winter.

There's also a slight uptick in hospitalizations. Roughly a week and a half ago, Hamilton Health Sciences stated it was in the midst of "the most significant capacity pressures we've experienced since the pandemic began."

Baird said the pressure hospitals and the whole health-care system are facing aren't entirely as a result of COVID-19.

She said hospitals will likely continue to feel the pressure even with waning COVID-19 infections.

The number of people getting a third COVID-19 vaccine dose isalso stagnant, with some 48 per cent of the total population having a booster shot.

Baird said public health is asking itself what more it can do to boost vaccination rates, notingsome people are waiting to get a booster shot because they were recently infected.

She pointed to mobile vaccine clinics, the clinic at Limeridge Mall and the GO-VAXX bus. She also said vaccine ambassadors and local agencies are helping promote getting vaccinated.