Canada’s COVID-19 cases surpass 100,000 mark

Canada’s struggle against the COVID-19 pandemic passed a bleak milestone on Thursday, with data from one of the hardest-hit provinces pushing the national caseload over the 100,000 threshold.

The national tally, reached after Ontario reported 173 new cases, secured Canada’s place among the 20 countries hardest-hit by the novel coronavirus since its global spread began six months ago.

Medical experts say the Canadian figures highlight both successes and failures in Canada’s response to the pandemic, noting provincial and territorial health systems remained able to cope with the crisis, despite governments’ early reluctance to impose widespread closures and lack of a robust testing regime.

“It could have been much more than that had we not implemented the measures we did when we did,” said Dr. Susy Hota, medical director of infection prevention and control at Toronto’s University Health Network. “We did not overwhelm the system in that initial wave that hit the country.”

Hota said the medical community was awake to the possibility of a serious medical crisis ahead of the population at large, who for weeks were told that a new form of coronavirus originating in the Chinese city of Wuhan posed a minimal-to-low risk to Canadians.

Early literature on the disease eventually dubbed COVID-19 sounded tentative alarm bells for doctors before the federal government launched an information blitz aimed at curbing its spread on Jan. 24, she said.

Government assurances that the disease had not reached Canadian shores had to be abandoned the next day when a Toronto man returning from a visit to Wuhan was identified as the country’s first COVID-19 patient. Three days later, another case was diagnosed in British Columbia.

The small number of cases seen in those provinces over February were all linked to travel to either China or Iran and not believed to pose an imminent health risk.

In late February and early March, cases of COVID-19 began appearing in other provinces, starting with the one that would become the epicentre of Canada’s outbreak.

Quebec has recorded the highest number of cases and fatalities since its first case was announced on Feb. 27. The province’s spring break, which falls on the first week of March, has been cited as a root cause of the severe outbreak there.