Dr. Penny Sutcliffe, medical officer of health at Public Health Sudbury and Districts shared her concern about the recent community spread of COVID-19.

Greater Sudbury has seen a spike in COVID-19 numbers, with 22 new cases being reported in the past week and a half.

“Of these, over a third are in people who just don’t know how they were infected; they didn’t travel somewhere where there’s more COVID-19, they don’t know anybody who has COVID-19,” said Sutcliffe in a video statement that was released by PHSD Friday afternoon.

“Just as they went about their usual business, their normal days they became infected. Could be me, could be you, could be any of us.”

Sutcliffe explained that this is evidence of continued community spread of the virus.

“Perhaps that’s not surprising with the province opening up and people getting together socially, meeting up with one another,” said Sutcliffe. “But it is a reminder to us the important things we’ve been doing and we’ve been learning over the last number of months we need to continue.”

The city’s medical officer of health explained that this means wearing face coverings, maintaining social distance, staying home if you’re feeling ill, washing your hands and getting tested if you have any concerns that you may have COVID-19.

“We all want to get out, we all want to see friends and family so the answer right now is not ‘no don’t do that’, the answer is ask yourself critical questions about how you can do that safely,” said Sutcliffe.

“The virus does not care what we did, the sacrifices that we’ve been making over these months, it does not matter what we did yesterday, what matters is what we do today, tomorrow and ongoing.”