Officials say the first person who tested positive for a variant of COVID-19 in the Kingston, Ont., area caught it through community spread in a different region that's grappling with over 100 likely cases of the more infections strain.
The medical officer of health for the Kingston, Frontenac and Lennox and Addington health unit says the person had travelled to the Simcoe-Muskoka area and is believed to have been infected there.
But Dr. Kieran Moore notes that the case is not believed to be connected to a large outbreak involving variant cases at a long-term care home in Simcoe Muskoka.
He says the Kingston-area resident is believed to have been infected with the more transmissible U.K. variant of COVID-19 in the broader Simcoe-Muskoka community.
Moore says that case has been linked to four other cases in his region, but all those people have since recovered and spread of the variant seems to have been limited to that group.
Moore's public health unit has recommended that anyone returning from travel outside the region get tested for COVID-19 given the spread of the new variant in the province.