A week ago, Ontarians were allowed to gather in crowds of 250 despite the global coronavirus pandemic.

The province had announced that publicly-funded schools would close, but many establishments stayed open, including stores, malls, bars and restaurants.

Four days later — Tuesday — the province declared an emergency and ordered a number of other closures including theatres, private schools, licensed child care centres and recreational programs. It also limited restaurants to takeout or delivery.

By then, there was confirmed community spread despite the incremental measures implemented by the government to decrease social interaction and contain the virus.

“We’re going to expect to see more and more in the coming days,” said Toronto epidemiologist Jeff Kwong. “The problem is we really don’t know how many more.”

How the virus spreads, he says, will depend on “one, how many cases there really are out there and two, how strict people actually follow this social distancing. I think those are the two factors that are most important.”

Kwong says the province wasn’t slow to respond to the virus. Until the first confirmed case here, on January 25, the hope was that the countries it had spread to would be able to contain it.

“At first, every single case that came in was either a traveller or had been in close contact with a traveller, a household member,” he said.

But now, with community transmission, many stores remain open in Toronto including the Eaton Centre, EB Games and the LCBO. A hockey camp for kids was up and running in Burlington on Monday and didn’t shut down until the government forced them to.

“It’s kind of despairing to me to hear all these things,” said Kwong. “Having the hockey school in Burlington was not necessary. If it was up to me, I wouldn’t let the LCBO stay open.”

The employees “would be at risk because they’re interacting with lots of people,” he said. “The more people you interact with, the greater your chances are that you’re going to get it. And the greater chance that you’re going to give it to somebody else.

“In other places they’ve only kept open grocery stores, pharmacies and gas stations.”

Studies on the virus show that a person with COVID-19 will infect two to three people on average who will exhibit symptoms in about five days. The virus can live for up to three days on surfaces such as stainless steel and plastic, according to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine.

As of Thursday, there were 251 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the province, a total of 690 nationwide.

Kwong says he doesn’t understand the rationale of keeping the Eaton Centre open, unless it’s to allow people to access the pharmacy inside the mall.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Although community transmission in Toronto was only confirmed this week, Kwong believes it could have occurred here as early as March 2 or 3, after a resident of Sudbury was diagnosed when they returned from a prospector’s conference in Toronto.

Penny Sutcliffe, Sudbury’s medical officer of health, said people from all over the globe attended the conference, which was called Shake Hands With the World, and photos she saw of the event showed it was packed.

But how the man contracted the virus, “we’ll probably never know,” she said.

Many countries had closed their borders by the time the conference took place, but Canada didn’t take that step until this week. And it left the border open to U.S. citizens until Thursday.

Kwong said in general, the literature shows that travel restrictions are probably less effective than social distancing.

“I think combining them, having both of them together, is more effective than either one alone. So now we’ve got it all,” he said. “The only question is, did we do it too late.”

The health systems in Italy and other countries have been overwhelmed by the number of people getting sick from the virus, and that is “soon to happen in the U.S. would be my guess,” said Kwong.

There are, however, promising developments in some other countries.

South Korea has been aggressive in finding cases, isolating them and doing the contact tracing, said Kwong.

The country also has one of the highest testing rates, according to Worldometer, a privately owned company that is run by an international team of developers, researchers and volunteers and makes worldwide statistics available.

As well, the rate at which people are being infected in Hong Kong and Japan is much lower than in countries such as Italy, the U.S. and Iran.

“I think the difference between those countries, and a lot of the other countries ... is the level of compliance, their willingness to follow orders,” said Kwong.