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COVID-19: Ontario reports 356 new cases and a jump in deaths

TORONTO, ON., June 4, 2020 — Today, Ontario public health officials reported 356 new COVID-19 infections and there was a jump in deaths from 19 on Wednesday to 45 more today. The province also reported 397 recoveries bringing its recovery total to 23,208.

Ontario has reported a total of 29,403 cases of COVID-19 along with 2,357 coronavirus-related deaths. While all but 103 of these 2,357 deaths have been in people aged 60 and above.

Meanwhile, the province reported an impressive 20,800 test results and the number of COVID-19 patients admitted to hospitals has dipped since the previous day by 15 to 776. Of those people, 121 were in intensive care, down six from Wednesday and the number of patients on ventilators increased by two to 94 yesterday.

Toronto’s numbers have yet to be posted but as of 3 pm on June 2 the Toronto Public Health reported a total of 11,652 cases up 139 from the previous day, along with a total of 845 deaths and 152 outbreaks of COVID-19. 8,948 Torontonians have recovered from the virus.

“In Toronto, unfortunately we are still seeing approximately 150 people newly diagnosed with COVID-19 each day,” said Dr. Eileen de Villa, Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health. “For each one of these individuals, a key role of local public health is to investigate how the person got their infection and to identify and follow-up with people they unknowingly exposed in the days leading up to their confirmed diagnosis. This is what is known as case and contact management,” said Dr. de Villa.

“The number of contacts for each COVID-19 case can vary depending on an individual’s living, work and social situations,” said Dr. de Villa. “Some people have very few points of contact – especially since public health and physical distancing measures were put in place. In these situations, the work of following up on contacts can be completed quickly – sometimes within a few hours. More complex contact identification that involves many close contacts across jurisdictions can take much longer. This was certainly the case at the beginning of our COVID-19 outbreak back in January when people were moving around much more in our community. And it may be the case again as our city opens up,” added Dr. de Villa.

Toronto Public Health stresses the importance of gathering the details case investigations. “Case and contact management is critical to containing virus spread and keeping people in our community safe,” said Dr. de Villa. “It helps reduce the spread of COVID-19 at the individual level by identifying where someone may have become infected and who they, in turn, many have infected.”

Toronto Public Health at the very beginning of our COVID-19 response, says they had 50 staff working on case and contact management but now they have over 550 staff to
conduct case investigations and contact tracing. The city’s health officials have also partnered with the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario, the University of Toronto, other
local public health departments and a number of other agencies to boost this workforce by 200 more.

Dr. de Villa also pointed out that although “the media have reported delays in our case follow up times, our data shows that from May 27-29, we were able to contact almost 90% of new
COVID-19 cases within 24 hours.”

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Peel Region has reported the second-highest number of COVID-19 cases in the GTA

Across the GTA, Peel has reported the second highest number of coronavirus-related cases in the province with 4,725, Durham has reported 1,505, York has had 2,547 and Halton has reported 661 cases of COVID-19. By comparison other large Ontario cities like Ottawa have reported 1,980 cases and Hamilton has reported 699 COVID-19 cases, while the Waterloo region has seen 1,119 cases.

Quebec has reported the most COVID-19 cases in Canada

So far in Canada there have been a total of 93,085 reported cases of COVID-19, along with 7,498 deaths while 51,048 Canadian residents have recovered from the virus. Quebec with 51,884 by far is the province with the most coronavirus cases.