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A little more than two weeks ago, as the World Health Organization declared a pandemic, and Canadian experts scrambled to understand the scope of the COVID-19 outbreak, the Granite Club in Edmonton was preparing to host dozens of doctors and medical professionals for the most Canadian of events: a curling bonspiel.

The annual tournament, held this year between March 11 and 14, has now become one of the hotspots for the COVID-19 outbreak in Canada, with a cascade of infections among doctors and other health-care workers, and with public health agencies across the country scrambling to find people — patients, co-workers — who were in contact with them.

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In previous years, says an old event report on the Alberta Medical Association website, doctors mixed tartans with St. Patrick’s Day costumes. The point is to have fun, even if you weren’t much of a curler, it says.

On March 11, Alberta had just 19 cases of COVID-19, all related to international travel. The extreme measures that have come into place across Canada in the ensuing weeks — social distancing, shutdowns — had not yet been announced. The bonspiel wrapped up on March 14, a Saturday.