For a four hour window on Friday, Jul. 17, 2020, the Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington (KFL&A) Public Health region was without any cases of COVID-19.

Dr. Kieran Moore, Medical Officer of Health for KFL&A Public Health, provided this update during a press conference that took place on the afternoon of Friday, Jul. 17, 2020. That press conference was meant to allow the media to ask questions as the region moves into Stage Three of the Provincial Framework for Reopening. However, as Moore briefed the media on some changes taking place to Public Health’s COVID-19 Status of Cases Dashboard, he explained a new case was detected the same day.

“I can tell you that we have one new positive lab test today, and that that was a known contact of a case associated with the previous outbreak. It was an expected case, and so I think that brings us to 38 cases that were associated with the nail salon outbreak,” Moore said, referring to the COVID-19 outbreak locally that began with cases linked to Binh’s Nail and Spa and saw cases involving a number of other nail salons locally.

Moore said the patient with the new cases is currently quarantining at home, being monitored by KFL&A Public Health nurses, and is doing well.

Until the positive lab results of the new case came in, all of the known 105 cases in the region had been resolved.

“We had four hours with no cases,” Moore said. “This brings the total number of cases to 106 [in the region].”

Moore also explained that there will be delays in updating the KFL&A Public Health COVID-19 Status of Cases Dashboard as the local health unit participates in a project with the province.

“We, together with a few other health units, have been chosen to onboard the new case and contact management tool for the Province of Ontario. We have started that today. As a result, our dashboard that is updated usually Monday to Friday will be delayed somewhat as we’re trying to pull data out of this new case and contact management tool into our data dashboard on the website,” he said.

While the Dashboard is delayed in being updated, Moore said KFL&A Public Health will share any new information with the public via Twitter and various media outlets.

Kingstonist will update our COVID-19 Guide as data becomes available accordingly.