The City Above Toronto is facing both a challenge and a blessing amidst the pandemic.

The challenge: it has been particularly hard hit by the COVID-19 outbreak, with a rate of 113 infections per 100,000 residents — one of the highest rates in the GTA.

The blessing: Vaughan council has been out-front in how it has dealt with the virus. It was one of the first to declare a state of emergency, shut down its parks, and now, move its Canada Day party online, in the hope that a preventative approach would slow the spread.

Vaughan announced it would “host its first-ever virtual celebration” on July 1, instead of its popular Canada Day festival, “to protect the health and well-being of its residents,” Mayor Maurizio Bevilacqua said in an interview.

“All the data and facts and figures that I have analyzed lead me to believe that we are in a marathon,” Bevilacqua said. “While I’m rooted in hope and optimism, I have a responsibility to give a realistic assessment of exactly what is transpiring in our city.”

York Region public health officials say as coronavirus cases begin to “plateau” across the region, Vaughan’s numbers are growing — with most cases believed to be linked to community spread. As of Tuesday, York had 824 total confirmed cases, with almost half in Vaughan. In comparison, Markham has 60 cases per 100,000 people, according to public health. And Toronto hovers around 87 cases per 100,000.

Health officials say many of the initial cases of coronavirus in the province — and in York Region — were linked to international travel, among those who had travelled from global hot spots such as China, Iran and Italy, said Altaf Stationwala, the CEO of Mackenzie Health.

“The diversity of our community, with residents who have roots in Iran, in Italy and China, and the travel related to that has had an impact,” he said, adding that the hospital network in York Region has had “double the volume of Toronto even though Toronto’s population is that much greater.”

“It’s starting to level out, but by far the numbers would show that this region is still one of the busiest.”

A third of Vaughan’s population is of Italian descent, according to the latest census. Italy has been one of the hardest hit countries by the virus, with more than 20,000 deaths reported this week.

The suburb of Woodbridge, has had half of Vaughan’s cases, said Dr. Karim Kurji, the region’s medical officer of health.

But while the virus may have arrived here via travel, Kurji said it’s concerning that likely more than 60 per cent of the city’s identified cases are due to local transmission — and there’s no indication that it’s slowing.

“What we really need to know are the folks who are in the community, who are not self-isolating, who are at risk to the community,” said Kurji. “But there is no way of really knowing who that is.”

Kurji said that was why the hospitals are implementing wider criteria for testing. He said in order to stop the spread, “we want to identify these folks so we can put rings around them, and their contacts.”

Any Vaughan resident who has COVID-19 symptoms needs to get tested, said Kurji, adding that even a cold or a runny nose could be enough to warrant a trip to an assessment centre.

“Every case that we prevent, basically prevents 60 to 100 cases down the road.”

Steven Hoffman, professor of global health, law and political science at York University, said it’s hard to pinpoint why Vaughan’s numbers are so high compared to surrounding municipalities.

Hoffman said it could be related to the high travel from the area, but also that awareness of the virus in the Italian community was delayed, compared with other countries that had been hit earlier.

“While there was great awareness among the Chinese communities and precautions taken, there may have not been as much awareness among the Italian community until we started hearing about cases overloading the local health-care system in northern Italy,” he said.

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Vaughan has already been hit with a number of outbreaks at gyms, grocery stores and long-term care centres.

Two took place in March at gyms at the Al Palladini Community Centre and at the Body Barre women’s gym, after “somebody had lunch with a sick traveller from New York City.”

Kurji said public health has been in contact with almost all of those who were at the gym, but most of those have not been counted as “they haven’t turned into cases yet.”

More recently, a number of employees at Longo’s contracted the virus, as recently as last week. But “there is no evidence the virus was transmitted to the public,” Kurji said.

“So there is something else going on in Vaughan.”

When asked what that might be, Bevilacqua said simply, “this is a global pandemic and we are an international city.”

But he points out that from the onset, the city was quick to act: “We were the first large municipality to call a state of emergency, we were the first to close down our parks,” he said.

The city was also one of the first to suspend bylaws around noise and weight restrictions on public roads, as well as those restricting the unloading of commercial vehicles, to allow easier delivery of needed products like food.

And last week, the city took measures to “protect tenants from discontinuance of vital services (gas, hydro, water) by a landlord.”

Stationwala said despite the numbers, he is optimistic the region is on the mend. He said the hospital is still doing more than 100 assessments per day, but has the capacity for more tests and patients.

“We are not overwhelmed right now,” said Stationwala. “The system is working quite well. And I am hopeful that we have had almost three weeks of significant effort around social isolation, so it should start to show its gains.”

And although July 1 seems far away, Kurji says given the data, Vaughan’s move to a virtual party is probably a good one.

“We might have a plateauing in the rest of the region sooner, but we might not have that same plateau in Vaughan for a little longer.”

Correction – April 15, 2020: This article was edited from a previous version to make clear that Dr. Karim Kurji, York region’s medical officer of health, did not make a statement linking the population demographics of Woodbridge to the number of COVID-19 cases in the suburb.

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