COVID-19: Ontario reports 483 new cases, 26 more deaths

Toronto reports 1,769 cases and 54 deaths

TORONTO, ON., April 9, 2020 – Today, Ontario reported 483 increasing its total number of province wide novel coronavirus cases to 5,759. Sadly, Ontario reported 28 more deaths bringing the death toll within the province up to 200.

Public health officials said today there are 1,108 cases under investigation, in spite of Premier Doug Ford’s statement that the province would be testing more than 13,000 cases per day starting today.

Yesterday Premier Doug Ford said the number being tested is “unacceptable when public health has said we have the capacity to test over 13,000 tests yet we can’t get close to that number.” Ford said “starting tomorrow we had better be getting 13,000 tests done a daily.” Premier Ford pointed out how Ontario is lagging behind a lot of provinces and countries when it comes to testing.

The number of hospitalized patients in Ontario due to the virus has increased from 605 to 632 and the number of patients in ICU has increased from 246 to 264. 214 patients are currently on ventilators, up from 195 yesterday.

Long-term care homes continue to be hit hard with 11 more outbreaks since yesterday bringing the number up to 69 reported outbreaks at this point. There have now been 86 deaths related to long-term care homes up from 78 a day ago.

Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Eileen de Villa said, “Yesterday was a difficult day as we learned about the devastating impact of COVID-19 in some of our worst-hit long-term care homes. Sadly, a large number of residents are sick and many have died. These people are our parents, our grandparents and our loved ones. The fatal impact of COVID-19 on our loved ones in long-term care is becoming painfully clear.”

When asked why there are so many outbreaks in long-term care homes, Dr. de Villa said it gets in there through visitors and employees. “One way or another, COVID-19 gets into long-term care homes through people; this includes the people who visit long-term care homes and the people who work there,” said Dr. de Villa.

In Toronto, as of 12:30 p.m. today there are 1,769 cases of COVID-19. This includes 1,519 confirmed cases and 250 probable ones. There are 174 cases hospitalized, and 76 in intensive care units.

“Sadly, there have been a total of 54 deaths from COVID-19 in Toronto,” said Dr. de Villa. As I stated yesterday, please join me as I extend my sincerest condolences to the families and friends of all individuals who have died from COVID-19 in our community.”

52.5 percent of Ontario cases are located within the GTA.

“It is important to remember that COVID-19 is new – the virus was only discovered 3 months ago,” said Dr. de Villa in her daily press statement. “All around the world, we are still learning how to
slow it down and prevent further spread in settings like our long-term care homes. The most important way is through physical distancing.”

The data for the Ontario report were based on information extracted from the integrated Public Health Information System (iPHIS) database as of April 8, 2020 at 4:00 p.m.

Total COVID-19 cases in Canada

Canada has now reported 1,297 more cases of COVID-19 bringing its total to 19,774 including 60 more deaths bringing the total up to 461. With 200, Ontario still has the most deaths due to COVID-19, closely followed by Quebec with 175 deaths. British Columbia has recorded five more deaths bringing a 48 novel coronavirus-related deaths reported. Quebec by far still has the most cases of COVID-19 with 10,031, followed by Ontario at 5,759 and British Columbia at 1,336. Alberta has 1,423 cases and the rest of the provinces have well below 300 cases each.

Number of COVID-19 cases in the world

Worldwide there are 51,522 more cases today bringing the total up to 1,503,900 cases of COVID-19 as of 5:30 pm April 8, 2020 as reported by Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering. Of those cases there have been 4,534 more deaths bringing the death toll to 89,931 with 340,112 recoveries.

The United States by far has the most cases of COVID-19 worldwide with 432,579, followed by Spain who with 152,446 while Italy has the third most cases with 139,422. Germany now has 113,615 novel coronavirus reported cases. These are followed by France – 112,950, China – 82,883, Iran – 66,220, United Kingdom – 61,497, Turkey – 38,226 and Switzerland – 23,612, Belgium-24,983 and Netherlands- 21,898 then Canada at 19,290.

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