Ontario hunting COVID-19 hot spots
Parts of Toronto and Peel of concern as testing falls well short of capacity
An unexpected jump in new COVID-19 cases this week has prompted health officials to take a closer look for hot spots and consider sending mobile testing vans, says Ontario’s chief medical officer.
“We’re trying to understand where that’s occurring … and focus testing and encourage testing in those specific areas,” Dr. David Williams told reporters Friday.
Ontario has had more than 400 new confirmed and probable cases daily for four days after a trend of 10 days below 400, according to a Star compilation of data from health units.
“It is concerning,” Dr. Barbara Yaffe, Ontario’s associate medical officer of health said of the Ministry of Health’s own statistics. “We’re definitely monitoring very closely.”
There were 492 new cases as of 5 p.m. Friday, according to the Star’s survey measuring the previous 24 hours, bringing the total to 26,260 since the outbreak began in January. Another 22 deaths pushed the total fatalities to 2,113.
Officials would not single out specific neighbourhoods but Yaffe noted 64 per cent of Ontario’s cases are in the GTA, particularly parts of Toronto and Peel. Toronto, for example, reported 258 new cases Friday.
York and Durham regions are also experiencing high numbers along with Ottawa and Windsor, she added.
“We are working closely with those health units … trying to identify, if there is no obvious contact, whether there’s some common places that people might have been,” Yaffe said.
Premier Doug Ford hinted at the mobile van tactic earlier in the day, saying “we’re going to go into communities where there’s … hot spots” and promised an ad campaign encouraging people with mild symptoms to get tested at assessment centres.
“In these hot areas, if I’ve got to make robocalls to get people out, I will,” Ford said.
The effort comes as Ontario’s testing for COVID-19 has fallen so far short this week that the capacity to check 46,000 people for the highly contagious virus has been wasted.
Ministry of Health figures released Friday showed 11,276 samples were processed Thursday, almost 9,000 below the ability of provincial government, hospital and commercial labs to provide results on more than 20,000 daily.
Combined with daily shortfalls since Monday — when just over 5,000 samples were processed — the foregone capacity totals about 46,000 over four days.
“We aren’t doing nearly the testing we should,” said Colin Furness, an infection control epidemiologist at the University of Toronto who has advocated more proactive testing of people in jobs with occupational exposure to the public, such as grocery clerks and bus drivers.
“With the reopening of stores, the number of people who should be tested has now increased substantially.”
Ford also pledged a broader testing plan coming next week will include more workers, such as truck drivers.
As recently as last week, the province’s medical officers were arguing against wider testing that would target workers with occupational risk of exposure or people without symptoms.
But Williams said that changed because the conclusion of a testing blitz in nursing homes and fewer people than expected showing up at assessment centres left lab capacity available. NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said she was shocked it took officials so long to realize more and broader testing is the way to go.
“Low-testing numbers put people’s health at risk, and put Ontario’s economic reopening at risk,” said Horwath.
This weekend, Ford said there is a push to test residents and staff in retirement homes, along with more health-care workers and going back into nursing homes where the virus has spread like wildfire.
The Ontario government’s official number of confirmed cases rose by 441 on Wednesday, up from 413 the day before even as test processing has fallen dramatically from the 18,354 samples handled last Thursday.
Ontario had 961people in hospital with COVID-19, with 153 seriously ill in intensive care and 120 of them on ventilators.
The Ministry of Health said the cases of 18,767 people who contracted the illness are considered resolved.