Toronto continues encouraging case trend
Toronto on Friday recorded its lowest daily increase in COVID-19 infections since early April, part of an encouraging downward trend.
Toronto Public Health said the city saw 86 new infections — the fewest since April 6. Toronto also recorded eight new COVID-19 deaths — a fraction of daily deaths in early April when outbreaks were hitting many seniors’ homes.
Recent daily infection counts have gone up and down but overall are declining, likely because increased testing is identifying sick people before they spread the virus in the community, public health chief Dr. Eileen de Villa said Friday.
“I am encouraged by our progress,” de Villa said, while launching an online “dashboard” to help Torontonians track the city’s progress in combating the virus that has killed more than 8,000 Canadians and 400,000-plus people worldwide.
Although indicators are moving in the desired direction, Toronto is not yet ready to move to the province’s Stage 2 reopening, de Villa said.
Friday saw people in much of Ontario finally gather to eat and drink on patios, go to malls, get haircuts and use public swimming pools — among other services allowed under Stage 2.
Sources told the Star’s Robert Benzie that Toronto is looking at further easing restrictions on June 26, and that de Villa and Ontario’s other local medical officers of health will discuss the next steps in a conference call on Saturday.
Premier Doug Ford said he is encouraged by recent trends, but Toronto can only move to Stage 2 after de Villa gives the green light.
Toronto’s data dashboard shows groups of indicators as green when the city is meeting its goals, yellow when areas need “further attention,” and red when “indicators are consistently trending away from and not meeting their goals.”
On Friday the indicators were yellow overall. They were yellow specifically for virus spread and containment, and for lab testing. Overall health-care capacity and the public health system’s capacity were both green.
Indicators don’t have to all be green to proceed to Stage 2, de Villa said, but she warned if any “start to move toward red, we would need to look more closely at some of our strategies for reopening.”