A heart is lit up in a Hilton Hotel in downtown Toronto in support of health-care workers, as seen near hospital row on University St. on April 19, 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
COVID-19 slowing as Ontario records 13,017 cases, 699 deaths
Another 101 health-care workers — including 22 in hospitals and 27 in nursing homes — have come down with COVID-19 in the latest testing results released by the Ontario government Tuesday.
A heart is lit up in a Hilton Hotel in downtown Toronto in support of health-care workers, as seen near hospital row on University St. on April 19, 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ontario has surpassed 13,000 cases of COVID-19 and hit 699 deaths but the daily rate of growth in new infections has slowed.
“We’re levelling and yet I can’t say we’ve peaked and come down yet,” chief medical officer Dr. David Williams said Tuesday after a meeting on the eventual loosening of restrictions on the economy.
But the number of new daily infections remains too high to consider easing restrictions on the economy just yet, he added, a day after computer models indicated the province is reaching a plateau in cases.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
“We do want to see evidence the community-wide transmission has been contained significantly,” Williams said.
A Star compilation of data from regional public health units at 5 p.m. Tuesday shows the province had 483 new confirmed and probable cases in the preceding 24 hours, a relatively low increase of 3.9 per cent compared to recent days, which have been in the range of five per cent.
That brought the tally since the outbreak began to 13,017 cases. There were 42 more deaths.
Across Canada, there have been 37,374 cases and 1,728 deaths, said federal public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam.
At least 399 nursing home residents have now died in Ontario. There are outbreaks in 128 of the province’s 626 long term care homes, where the spread of COVID-19 is “growing,” said associate medical officer Dr. Barbara Yaffe.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
Another 101 health-care workers — including 22 in hospitals and 27 in nursing homes — have contracted the new coronavirus in the latest testing results released by the Ontario government Tuesday.
That brings the number of health-care workers confirmed to have COVID-19 to 1,368, and includes deaths of a Brampton hospital environmental department worker and a personal support worker at a nursing home in Scarborough.
The Ministry of Health said there were 859 COVID-19 patients in Ontario hospitals — up 57 from the previous day. Of those, 250 were seriously ill and in intensive-care units, with 194 of them on ventilators.
The Greater Toronto Area accounts for almost 60 per cent of COVID-19 cases in the province.
Rob
Ferguson is a Toronto-based reporter covering Ontario politics
for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @robferguson1.
