Hello all current and past Credit Valley bridge players,
As you would have read, club games have been opening up across the United States for some time now while clubs in Canada have taken a more cautious approach. However, that, too, is changing with some local clubs announcing that they are going to start a limited number of face-to-face games at the end of September. That has obviously got us thinking and this letter is to let you know that your Credit Valley bridge directors think that the future is still too uncertain for us to take the risk of opening up to face-to-face games in the next few weeks. Why do we think that?:
·There seems to be no doubt that we are in the 4th wave of this blight
· Called the wave of the unvaccinated, there are still over 3.7 million people in Ontario who have yet to receive one shot. Of those people, 2.5 million are unable to receive a vaccine because of their age
· Those unvaccinated children started school this week and many will be going home to parents who won’t or can’t be vaccinated, thereby enabling the Delta variant possibly to find a fresh foothold in the community.
·Given the incubation period is as long as two weeks, we do not believe that the impact of back-to-school will be known until towards the end of September.
Other facts that we have considered in arriving at this decision are:
·While currently called the disease of the unvaccinated, some 20 – 25% of new daily cases are consistently among those who have been double-dosed
·While small in number, the number of double-dosed individuals in ICU with Covid has risen in the past two weeks from 9, representing 8.6 % of all those Covid patients in ICU to 14 cases or 10.6% of the total
·The Centre of Disease Control very recently released data from a new study suggesting that vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation is only 75% amongst those aged 75+ compared to 90% for the under 75s thereby paving the way for booster shots among the elderly. Indeed, Ontario has already started doing that among those who are immunocompromised.
All this suggests that the prudent approach is to wait and see what happens to both Covid case and hospitalisation trend lines now that children have gone back to school and as most of us begin to spend more time indoors with the start of Fall.
Our approach does not mean that we are not planning on starting face-to-face games. We hope that the current situation at least stays the same if not improves. This would allow us to return to face-to-face, possibly in November. In the meantime, we are looking at the protocols being put in place by other clubs as well as ensuring we have a clear understanding of the absolute minimum requirements that would be imposed on us by the authorities.
Until then, we will continue to offer you our on-line games each week which we hope you will continue to enjoy.
Your Credit Valley Virtual Team
A special thank you to Steven Norris for providing the overview of our provincial status on Covid-19.
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