More than 100,000 visitors to the province of Ontario’s website have been “directed to seek immediate medical assistance” due to COVID-19 symptoms in the past week, data from the province’s online assessment tool reveals.

Another half-million visitors to the online site had symptoms serious enough to be instructed to self-isolate — another indication of how serious the situation in Ontario is.

Around the world, governments have created online tools that ask people a series of questions to help them determine if they have symptoms of the rapidly spreading coronavirus. Ontario’s assessment tool, accessible through the Health Ministry website, officially went online March 23, after a soft launch three days earlier.

(A word about the numbers in this story: The provincial site does not account for people who visit the site more than once. This story will refer to “visits” or “visitors” to the site. It is possible that some people have visited the site and used the tool more than once.)

When the online tool was launched, people were encouraged by the Health Ministry to “take this self-assessment if you think you have coronavirus (COVID-19) or have been in close contact with someone who has it.”

As of Friday, 920,271 visitors to the site had taken the assessment, a series of questions that begin with the most serious symptoms: “Are you experiencing … severe difficulty breathing, severe chest pain, confusion, lost consciousness?”

The online tool also asks if the visitor has a fever, a “new cough” or shortness of breath. Other questions ask if the visitor has muscle aches, fatigue, sore throat, runny nose or a headache.

According to provincial data released to the Star, here is the result of the past week of online traffic to the self-assessment tool. The ministry was only able to provide a breakdown for 920,271 visits to the site as of 11:59 p.m. on Friday. Additional visits to the site put the total number of visitors over a million by Saturday afternoon.

Of those 920,271 visitors:

100,645 visitors to the site were directed to “seek immediate assistance” by calling 911 or going to a hospital emergency ward. Those visitors would have indicated they had the most serious symptoms, including severe difficulty breathing and severe chest pain.

119,071 visitors to the site were directed to seek clinical assessment by contacting Telehealth Ontario or calling their doctor. Those people would have been told either to visit an emergency room, if their symptoms and history indicated this was necessary, or to self-isolate.

197,115 visitors to the site reported moderate symptoms such as cough and fever. The online tool directed them to self-isolate and the tool provides timelines for that restriction.

246,641 visitors to the site were exhibiting mild symptoms such as headache or runny nose. They were also directed to self-isolate.

256,799 people (roughly one-quarter) reported no symptoms at all.

Ministry officials are struggling to understand the final category — the visitors reporting no symptoms — and there are several explanations. Some people who are healthy might use the tool out of curiosity, but it is likely that the larger number are returning travellers or those in the high-risk age category, 70 and older, who are seeking additional information.

On the weekend the province, to help understand the numbers in greater detail, launched an enhanced version of the online tool. The new version asks people if they have just returned to Canada; if so, the tool instructs them to self-isolate for 14 days. The updated version also asks people if they are over 70 or immunocompromised, and therefore at higher risk.

Local health units and Dr. David Williams, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, are working together to further fine-tune the tool, a provincial official told the Star.

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In its news release announcing the new tool, the province said it is critical to providing “real-time data on the number and geography of users.” Meanwhile, Ontario is making plans to free up hospital beds and is in discussion with hotels in case there is a dramatic influx of patients over the next few weeks.

To put the online tool’s numbers in perspective, as of Sunday, Ontario was reporting 1,355 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the province, including 23 deaths. All of the province’s confirmed cases are patients who have tested positive for the virus; however, as the Star has reported, many people who doctors believe have the virus have not been tested because Ontario is focusing its testing efforts on front-line workers in hospitals and nursing homes, and people (including nursing home and homeless shelter residents) who come into contact with large groups of people.

There is also a testing backlog, which Ontario is gradually reducing. As of Sunday, there were 7,203 tests awaiting results, a significant drop from 10,000 backlogged tests just a few days before.