Ontario’s public health officials have announced both good and bad news about the progress of the COVID-19 pandemic in the province, during a technical briefing on Monday (April 20).
The briefing was presented by Dr. Steini Brown, dean of the University of Toronto’s public health department, Ontario Health president and CEO Matthew Anderson, and associate chief medical officer of health Dr. Barbara Yaffe.
The good news is that the community spread of COVID-19 in Ontario appears to have peaked and is coming under control, as a result of public health interventions that were put in place.
“We’re hoping to see a reduction in cases as we go along,” Dr. Brown said, adding that the number of community deaths are expected to decrease.
Modelling projections released by the Ontario government on April 3rd had projected the peak happening in May, with 80,000 cases by the end of April.
With the peak now taking place in April, the total number of cases for the span of the outbreak is now expected to be less than 20,000 by the end of April.
The rate of growth in COVID-19 hospitalizations has also slowed, while the number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care units has remained relatively constant over the past week.
VIDEO: Dr. Steini Brown – COVID-19 technical briefing – April 20 2020
If current measures restricting spread of the disease remain in place, officials say Ontario appears to be tracking toward a “best case” scenario similar to the experience of South Korea.
The bad news is that the spread of COVID-19 in long-term care and other congregate settings such as homeless shelters seems to be growing.
Half of the deaths in Ontario have occurred in long-term care facilities, Dr. Brown said.
Dr. Yaffe said Ontario is urgently implementing its COVID-19 action plan for protecting long-term care homes, which includes: aggressive testing, screening and surveillance; managing outbreaks and spread of the disease; and growing the long-term care workforce by redeploying staff from hospitals and home care and community care as well as recruitment.
Dr. Yaffe added that implementation of enhanced public health measures will continue. She stressed that everyone needs to stay home as much as possible and maintain physical distancing to ensure the provincecontinues to stop the spread of COVID-19 and flatten the curve.
“These actions are making a big difference,” Dr. Yaffe said. “You need to stay the course and stay strong to save lives. Thank you all very much for your work in helping us keep this terrible infection from spreading more.”
In response to a media question on when we will be able to go back to normal life, Dr. Yaffe said there is no clear answer.
“When we do start to lift some of the measures, it will not be a light switch, on-off,” she said. “It will be very gradual, and we’ll have to measure the impact of each change as we make it, and make sure that we’re not seeing more infections as we lift it. Because once we lift it, it will be very hard to go back.”
She added that the current data reflects infections that happened two or three weeks ago, because of the virus’s incubation period of up to 14 days.
“We have to give it time,” she said. “People really have to stay the course for now.”
This story has been updated to include a video of Dr. Steini Brown speaking about the progress of COVID-19 in Ontario.
