TORONTO -- Toronto’s top doctor says her team is now endeavouring to provide more details on how COVID-19 is impacting the city’s long-term care homes, which face new outbreaks on an almost daily basis.

One day after suggesting that public health officials could not provide detailed information on COVID-19 cases in long-term care, de Villa said her team has “risen to the occasion” and has found a “workable solution” to meet the public’s need for additional information.

“After yesterday’s press conference where I told you based on my team’s work load, we did not have updated numbers for the situation in long-term care, I sincerely felt bad. I felt very bad having to tell you that we are not in a position to provide you with numbers,” she said.

“So I went back to the team and asked them to find a way, to find a way for us to continue to focus on our outbreak response, to provide the important support needed in our long-term care homes who are dealing with outbreaks, while at the same time addressing the important information need of our public.”

The total number of confirmed and probable cases in the city has increased to 2,670 and 243 people remain in hospital, with 94 in intensive care and 76 on ventilators.

There are currently 121 virus-related deaths in Toronto, up six from one day earlier.

The number of outbreaks at Toronto long-term care homes, facilities that have been hardest hit by the respiratory illness, has risen to 41, up from 38 on Tuesday, de Villa said.

The highest number of deaths reported at any single facility in Toronto is at Eatonville Care Centre, a long-term care home in Etobicoke.

On Wednesday, staff at the facility reported that 30 residents infected with the virus have now died.

“The plan is to provide numbers in a fashion that people can go look them up and see for themselves what is happening in long-term care homes,” de Villa said Wednesday.

“My team is working incredibly hard and it was a tough ask for me to make of my team because they are already working at more than maximum capacity, however as my team has done so many times before, they have risen to this occasion.”

She said part of the challenge is determining a patient’s exact cause of death in a timely fashion.

“Landing and confirming the cause of death in these situations takes some time, especially when a number of deaths occur over a short period of time.”

She noted it can sometimes take weeks to arrive at a definitive cause of death.

“This is why when it comes to infectious disease outbreaks in long-term care and in other congregate settings, we don’t always know the complete picture on cause of death until after the outbreak is declared over,” she said.

“The difference between the current COVID-19 outbreaks in long-term care homes and what we experience in regular influenza outbreaks, is that with influenza outbreaks, there is not as much public interest in the data in real-time.”

The province says they have linked 144 virus-related deaths to long-term care facilities in Ontario, which represents nearly half of all COVID-19 related deaths in the province.

The provincial government has recently announced strict new measures to protect people in long-term care, including banning staff from working in more than one facility.

De Villa called the situation at long-term care homes “very concerning.”

“They are concerning because they represent our parents, they represent our grandparents, they represent our loved ones and it truly makes me very, very sad to report on this information,” she said.

“Each and every day we are learning more about how COVID-19 moves through our community and impacts those who are infected.”