Situation still fragile
Just over half of Quebec’s total cases come from island
MONTREAL — Premier François Legault said Monday that Montreal’s reopening could be delayed well beyond May 25, describing the COVID-19 situation in Montreal as “fragile” and “worrisome.”
As the premier held his briefing, Montreal’s public health authority posted data showing the 295 more confirmed COVID-19 cases in the Montreal agglomeration and 56 more deaths than the day before.
Those deaths bring the region’s COVID-19 death toll to 1,919. The cumulative number of confirmed positive cases on the island of Montreal is 19,492, or just over half of Quebec’s total of 38,469 cases.
Legault acknowledged the troubling projections released Friday by Quebec’s public health institute, the INSPQ, which suggested that Montreal could see up to 150 fatalities and 500 hospitalizations per day, outside of long-term care homes, if deconfinement begins before the situation here is under control.
Legault described that possibility as “a hypothetical situation that will never come about” because the government will not allow the reopening of retail businesses, primary schools and daycares on May 25 if things don’t improve over the next two weeks.
“It is not impossible that we will decide to wait until September to open the schools in greater Montreal,” Legault said.
Public health director Horacio Arruda agreed that the Montreal situation is “fragile” and much depends on collaboration by the public with the two-metre rule.
“Everything depends on social distancing ,” he said. “Just 10 per cent less social distancing will have a significant effect on the curve.”
Legault said in the past week Quebec has increased testing from 6,000 to 10,000 per day across the province. Arruda said about 3,000 tests per day are being done through community interventions in the Montreal region, as opposed to in seniors’ homes and hospitals.
City buses are being transformed into mobile testing clinics to determine the scope of community outbreaks in certain neighbourhoods. Mobile testing clinics, which do not require appointments, will be in Verdun, Anjou and StLaurent on Tuesday. Nonmedical professionals such as dental hygienists are being trained to perform the coronavirus tests.
Legault urged employees of long-term care facilities who have recovered from COVID-19 to come back to work. He thanked the Canadian Army for the 780 soldiers currently helping out at these facilities and for its offer to up that total to 1,350.
Legault reacted negatively to a reporter’s suggestion that Montrealers should be confined to their region, though he did not rule it out.