At least 13 Toronto health-care professionals — doctors, nurses and long-term care workers — have tested positive for COVID-19, according to Toronto Public Health.

Tied in to this revelation is a new testing directive in Toronto where public health is focusing its testing efforts on people who work in health-care settings, homeless shelters or other places where the nature of their job puts them in contact with large groups of people.

“At this time there have been approximately 13 health-care workers who have tested positive for COVID-19,” said Dr. Michael Finkelstein, Toronto’s acting director of communicable disease control and associate medical officer of health.

Finkelstein released the information to the Star in response to questions related to the high risk of health professionals during the pandemic.

“It is important to note that as the situation evolves, it is expected that this number will continue to change daily,” Finkelstein said.

Toronto Public Health will not say how many are doctors, how many nurses, and how many are personal support or social workers in health-care settings. All 13 Toronto health-care professionals are self-isolating, according to Toronto Public Health. Officials would not say if any had to be hospitalized.

Finkelstein said it is vital that “all health-care workers should track how they feel closely.” He said they need to “diligently monitor themselves for signs of illness over the course of the pandemic” and tell their manager if they feel unwell.

Health-care workers on the front line of the epidemic take different precautions depending on where they work. Doctors and nurses seeing patients in an office do not typically have the same precautionary equipment as, for example, doctors and nurses working in public health or hospital settings.

At one large hospital in Toronto, a patient told the Star she was met by a nurse in “full protective gear” and taken to an assessment room for the COVID-19 test, which typically involves a nose and throat swab. As soon as the patient left the waiting room, another person in protective gear came and wiped down the chair the patient was sitting in.

Toronto Public Health’s Dr. Finkelstein reiterated the importance for all people — health-care professionals and non-health-care professionals — to “limit their social interactions as much as possible.”

Corresponding with the concern over health-care professionals who are on the front line, Toronto Public Health has made a change in its testing regime. This relates to the COVID-19 tests that are done at the assessment centres in Toronto.

“Due to evidence of community spread of COVID-19 in Toronto, the assessment centres in the Toronto Region will be shifting their focus to people who are at risk of transmitting COVID-19 to large groups of people,” says a directive by Toronto Public Health issued Friday. “Everyone else, even those with mild symptoms who have returned from travel, do not need testing unless they get sick enough to go to an emergency department.”

Medical sources have told the Star this shift is due to the current scarcity of testing kits and the fear that submitting too many tests into an already overburdened testing system will create an even bigger backlog. Public Health Ontario and hospitals are working on ramping up their testing ability in the province to handle 5,000 tests a day, a goal that is still two weeks away.

In its new directive from Friday, Toronto Public Health states that people with “mild” COVID-19 symptoms who are not at high-risk of transmission to larger groups” should not go to one of the assessment centres for a test. Instead they should self-isolate for 14 days.

Toronto Public Health defines “mild” symptoms as “mild symptoms of upper respiratory tract infection (cough, sore throat, headache, muscle aches, fatigue, runny nose, and joint aches, and may also include nausea, diarrhea and stomach pains) OR fever.”

But if people have these “mild” symptoms and work in any health-care setting (hospital, long-term care, retirement home, paramedics, etc.) or in settings that include homeless shelters or correctional facilities), Toronto Public Health states they should visit an assessment centre.

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As for the general public, Toronto Public Health states that if their mild symptoms are accompanied by unusual shortness of breath, chest pains, lethargy or drowsiness they should go to emergency.

As of Saturday, Toronto Public Health has had 193 cases of COVID-19 reported in Toronto. Ten of these people are hospitalized and of these, six are receiving care in the Intensive Care Unit. To date, there have been four other people diagnosed with COVID-19 who have recovered from their illness.

The daily briefing does not provide detail on the professions or the specific location where the person was believed to have been infected.