COVID-19 app could be ready by weekend, Ford says

Ontario’s delayed COVID-19 app could be ready by the weekend, Premier Doug Ford hinted Monday as 1,474 people across the province continued to fight active infections of the highly contagious virus.

They included 135 new cases reported by the Ministry of Health after a two-day spike of more than 160 cases each attributed to higher-than-expected numbers from Ottawa and the Leamington area south of Windsor.

“I look forward to getting that app,” said Ford, who has urged Ontarians to download it on their smartphones.

They will be automatically notified if they have come into close contact for long enough to be potentially infected by another app user who has tested positive for COVID-19 in the previous two weeks, getting a head start on the need to monitor for symptoms or get tested themselves.

The app was slated for release in the first week of July, but was pulled back for further development by the federal government, which worked with Ontario on the project that involved private-sector partners Shopify and BlackBerry.

Just over half the province had no additional cases of COVID-19, the Ministry of Health said Monday. “Locally, 28 of Ontario’s 34 public health units were reporting five or fewer cases, with 18 reporting no new cases at all,” Health Minister Christine Elliott tweeted. There were about 60 new cases in Ottawa in the last three days, an “uptick” Ontario’s associate medical officer blamed mostly on people in their 20s who attended private parties and caught the virus. “This is a trend we have seen over the last few weeks,” said Dr. Barbara Yaffe, urging young adults to be “responsible.”

Chief medical officer Dr. David Williams acknowledged a “most concerning” increase of cases in Leamington aside from the local farm worker community that has been a hot spot of its own in recent weeks.