Ontario’s war against COVID-19 is nearing its conclusion and it’s time to unleash the secret weapon: KFLA’s own Dr. Kieran Moore.
On Saturday news broke that our own chief medical officer of health was getting promoted to the big leagues, taking over as the province’s top doctor. Premier Doug Ford made it official on Monday, confirming that Moore would be replacing Dr. David Williams as Ontario’s chief medical officer of health.
Aside from maybe the timing of the announcement, the news itself wasn’t a huge surprise to anyone who has been keeping up to date with KFLA related COVID-19 news. It’s been talked about more than once among the local press gallery that Moore would almost certainly get a call from Ottawa or Toronto following the conclusion of the pandemic. It turns out the call came a bit earlier than expected, but the general prediction was correct: Moore was like that stand out player in Junior C hockey who was destined to jump a few levels as soon as the parent club saw an opportunity.
It’s well documented that KFLA has, for the most part, been able to keep COVID-19 contained at times when the rest of the province struggled. When things were at its worst in April, hospitals in Napanee and Kingston were able to take on patients from other health units who had become overwhelmed. When still under the previous colour-coded COVID-19 community status rating system, KFLA was often ‘green’-the best a community could be- while neighbouring communities imposed much stricter measures. This region was an early adaptor to mandatory masking as well and was one of the first in the province to offer drive-through COVID-19 assessment centres.
Of course population size plays a major factor in case counts and there’s no denying that some of the worst hit areas were more densely packed. But KFLA certainly had the potential to be hard hit-Kingston is after all a major city and home to Queen’s University, which is a hub for international students from all corners of the planet. The outlaying communities are also major tourist destinations, serving as weekend getaways for residents from COVID-19 hot spots such as the GTA or Ottawa. Just to make things a little more challenging, the region is also the riding of two of the better-known politicians who have been attempting to undermine Public Health’s messaging for the better part of a year now.
Through it all however Moore has shown steady leadership with consistent messaging backed by data. He’s managed to stay above the fray by not even dignifying claims made by select politicians with an answer.
He’s also made himself ultra accessible to the press, holding weekly media calls to answer any at all questions. His approach seems to be working as the region is among the highest vaccinated in the province while the active case count continues to dip near single digits. When numbers did spike he didn’t seek to blame the province or Ottawa. Instead he remained positive and continued to push the messaging that if we all did our part we’d get through it-and it appears as though he was right.
Moore’s promotion figures to benefit the province as a whole. Unfortunately for KFLA, Ontario’s gain is our loss.
Adam Prudhomme