Ontario has its first death with a COVID-19 connection as provincial health officials battle a backlog in testing for the new coronavirus and push to significantly increase daily lab capacity.

The death of a 77-year-old man in Barrie’s Royal Victoria Hospital was one of 12 new cases reported in the province Tuesday — a low number compared with a surge in recent days and a backlog of more than 1,500 tests pending.

“We don’t think there’s enough tests in Ontario,” chief medical officer Dr. David Williams said Tuesday, cautioning against interpretations that the sudden drop in new cases signifies a “downward trend.”

One of the new cases is a health-care worker in her 20s who travelled to Las Vegas recently and was on the job at the London Health Sciences Centre, interacting “closely” with patients and staff while showing symptoms, the local health unit said Tuesday. It is tracing patients and other contacts.

While provincial lab capacity has been increased to almost 2,000 tests a day — almost double the level a week ago — efforts are underway to boost that to 5,000 per day as concerns about the novel coronavirus grow following Premier Doug Ford’s emergency declaration and increasing person-to-person spread.

The snag is a combination of lab capacity and the fact some testing swabs come from a factory in northern Italy, the hardest-hit region of a country reeling from COVID-19 with a rapidly increasing case count and death toll.

Health Minister Christine Elliott said the unidentified man who died in the Barrie hospital on March 11 had underlying health conditions and had been in “close contact with someone who had COVID-19.”

But he was not tested until after his death, for which no reason was given. The exact cause of his death won’t be clear until a coroner’s investigation to determine if it was “because of COVID-19 or with COVID-19,” Elliott said.

“That’s a really important distinction.”

The case, which flew under the radar despite heightened awareness of the new coronavirus, raises the possibility of transmission of COVID-19 within the hospital.

Royal Victoria president Janice Skot said staff have “carefully tracked the patient’s movements throughout the health centre and…notified staff and physicians as appropriate.”

The fatality is “further evidence of the increasing seriousness of the situation we are in,” Williams said. Ontario’s case count has more than tripled in the last week.

With increasing demand for tests at assessment centres outside hospitals and concerns cases are expanding from travel-related causes, associate chief medical officer of health Dr. Barbara Yaffe said the province is working with its public health branch to create “more clear criteria” for who should be eligible.

The centres are seeing visits from large numbers of “the worried well,” added Yaffe, who stressed “we do not want any people tested who have no symptoms.” Test eligibility has been based on travel history, contact with anyone who has travelled or other clinical reasons that could point to possible COVID-19.

Most of Ontario’s 185 cases since the outbreak began have been recovering in self-isolation at home, but one is intubated and on a ventilator in hospital and another was seriously ill but is doing better, Williams told reporters at a daily briefing. Another five cases have been cleared after testing negative in two separate tests more than 24 hours apart.

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The province is bracing for a potential influx of cases as Ontarians travelling abroad or snowbirds wintering in the sunny south of the United States prepared to head for home amid repeated calls from the federal government to do so while commercial means remain available.

“Have some come into contact with COVID-19 without knowing?” said Williams, who noted anyone returning will have to self-isolate for 14 days at home and monitor themselves for symptoms.

The growing case count in the United States is of increasing concern, with 29 per cent of Ontario’s purely travel-related cases now coming from there and mainly from six states: New York, Colorado, California, Florida, Nevada and Massachusetts.

To date, a total of 11,167 Ontarians have been approved for testing.

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