

Chris Herhalt, CP24.com





Public health officials have reported at least 13 new cases of COVID-19 infection in Ontario on Tuesday.

The province also confirmed its first possible death of a person infected with COVID-19.

Health Minister Christine Elliott told CP24 that the case was in the Simcoe and Muskoka Public Health Unit, which encompasses Muskoka, Simcoe County and Barrie, and a posthumous test revealed that the person was infected with COVID-19.

The coroner will investigate whether COVID-19 was indeed the cause of that person's death.

Ontario’s official count released on Tuesday states that there are 189 active cases in the province and five recoveries. There are currently 1,567 people under investigation, the province says.

Officials reported 32 new cases on Monday.

Ontario Chief Medical Officer of Health said the decline in new cases on Tuesday vs. Monday was not something the public should pop the champagne over.

“It would be nice to think that could happen that quickly, but we’d need a lot more data to see a trend in either direction,” he told reporters Tuesday afternoon.

Ontario’s count did not include a separate positive case confirmed in Waterloo Region.

Some of the new cases announced by the province included two from London-Middlesex, and one from York Region, identified as a man in his 60s with recent travel to Costa Rica.

He presented himself to Southlake Regional Health Centre in Newmarket and along with all other patients disclosed on Tuesday, was discharged into self-isolation.

The increase comes as the provincial government declared a two-week state of emergency to enforce even stricter forms of social distancing to combat the spread of the virus.

Williams said Tuesday that “Toronto has some” cases of COVID-19 infection that can only be explained by community transmission of the virus.

He said several other municipalities are reporting one or two cases each that can be attributed to community transmission.

Elliott said the risk of community transmission may widen in the future.

“We have to be prepared for community spread in the future, we hope it doesn’t happen but we need to be prepared to expect that it might,” she said.

The remainder have all been found to have originated due to travel abroad or close contact with a previously confirmed case.

Williams said there has come a point in some instances where a thorough contact tracing and investigation cannot reveal how a patient contracted COVID-19, and at that point public health workers just have to maintain isolation and move on.

“When you have a case in a community that doesn’t have any travel history or a contact – you have to demonstrate there has been spread – that’s easy to say but it’s harder to do.”

Ontario Associate Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Barbara Yaffe said that 92 per cent of Ontario’s existing cases could be explained by travel to an impacted foreign country or close contact with a previously confirmed case.

Of those tied to travel, nearly a third involved travel to the United States.

Williams said the fact that hundreds of thousands of Canadians are expected to return from the United States over the next two to four weeks means the province is at a critical juncture in responding to the outbreak.

“We’re going to see how this one goes with the potentially large number of people who may have picked up COVID-19 from the USA,” Williams said. I would say we are going into our third challenge,” referring to the watch for travellers from China as Ontario’s “first” challenge and the detection of cases from Italy and Iran as the province’s “second” challenge.

He said that the Ford cabinet did not support restriction of US-Canada cross-border travel caused by trade of goods, but Ford himself did say he would support a blanket restriction on all U.S. leisure visitors.

Meanwhile, Yaffe said Public Health Ontario was working to overcome an earlier shortage of COVID-19 testing swabs and engineer faster ways to administer tests.

So far, the Public Health Ontario lab in Toronto has increased its daily testing capacity to 2,000 people, up from 1,000, and is working to increase to 5,000 tests per day.

Ontario’s soon to be operational total of 31 COVID-19 testing centres will also be adopting uniform testing criteria, taking samples from anyone who shows symptoms.

Numerous reports have emerged of people reporting to assessment centres and being turned away, either due to age or lack of a travel history abroad.

“We are working with Public Health Ontario to develop clearer criteria,” Yaffe said. “They should not be turning away people under 60.”

Canada so far has confirmed 484 cases of the virus, five deaths, and 12 recovered patients so far.