Pleading with people to continue to stay home, Premier Doug Ford will soon release some “encouraging” COVID-19 modelling projections proving Ontario’s efforts are working.

With the arrival of a spring weekend, Ford said Friday that Ontarians should resist the urge to head to their cottages because “by no means are we out of the woods right now.”

“We’ve come such a long way and it’s been a real, real fight and everyone has contributed. And please just, again, continue practicing social distancing. Don’t be travelling up to the cottage,” the premier told reporters at his daily Queen’s Park teleconference.

“It’s still a heavy burden on the people up in the northern areas and in cottage country, so let’s continue practice socially distancing and selfless isolating. I know it’s tough. I know it’s hard to do. But we’ve come such a long, long way,” said. Ford.

“We saw some positive results last night and it’s encouraging,” he said.

“I’ve always, always told the public we’d be fully transparent on modelling. I was briefed last night on the modelling and we’ve asked our COVID-19 command table to put the modelling out to the public. They said that they’d be able to do it on Monday.”

Ford emphasized that he did not want to overstate any good news in the updated modelling on the impact of the virus.

“We have a real fight on our hands still, as much as the modelling looked a little positive, it can go the other way. We could see a second stream of this coming,” he said.

Two weeks ago, his government unveiled modelling projections that warned Ontario could see 1,600 deaths from COVID-19 this month alone and hospital intensive care units could be overwhelmed if stricter physical distancing measures weren’t followed.

That modelling suggested that the measures so far in place have averted 300,000 cases and 6,000 deaths by the end of April.

As of 5 p.m. Friday, the province’s regional public health units were reporting 10,753 confirmed or probable cases of COVID-19 and at least 535 deaths.

Health Minister Christine Elliott said “of course we had to prepare for the worst-case scenario.”

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“We needed to build up hospital capacity, which we’ve done. We have about 200 people in intensive care right now on ventilators, but we are able to deal with many more. We hope that we don’t need to,” said Elliott.

“But as the premier indicated, it’s really because of the efforts of the people of Ontario, all 14.5 million people practicing physical distancing, staying at home, self-isolating as required for 14 days when coming from another jurisdiction,” she said.

“All of that has made a difference. All of that has saved thousands of lives. And I’m very, very grateful to the people of Ontario for doing that.”

Robert Benzie is the Star’s Queen’s Park bureau chief and a reporter covering Ontario politics. Follow him on Twitter: @robertbenzie

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