Niagara's Acting Medical Officer of Health is encouraging some caution as the United States prepares to reopen the land border with Canada.
Doctor Mustafa Hirji is asking people to consider postponing trips across the border as the prevalence of COVID-19 in the United States is higher than here at home.
"What we see when we look across the border is that it's nine to eleven times higher circulation of COVID-19 depending on if you're going to Erie County or Niagara County. Which mean there's nine to eleven times higher risk once you cross the border. So that basically wipes out the benefit that you've got from the vaccine - it's going to balance itself out."
Overall, he says he have been seeing a gradual decline in cases in Niagara, "So we've gone most of this week where we actually had most days the cases under 20. That's quite a big change from even a month ago and this is despite us getting into cooler weather, a time period when we thought cases might be on their way up. We're seeing schools have relatively few infections, so we're keeping those schools safe." But Hirji adds there could still be a bump due to Thanksgiving celebrations and other indoor gatherings as the temperature continues to drop.
The Canada/US land border is set to reopen to non-essential travel for fully vaccinated Canadians on November 8th.