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Ontario COVID-19 case count drops below 400 with 48 more deaths

TORONTO, ON., May 7, 2020 — Today, Ontario public health officials reported 399 new COVID-19 infections down 13 from yesterday’s report. Sadly the province also reported 48 deaths, 20 less than yesterday’s death count. Ontario’s total case count including recoveries has now risen to 19,121 while the total number of Ontarians who have lost their lives to COVID-19 is now 1,477. There have been 13,569 recoveries with 347 reported yesterday.

This week’s seven-day numbers are 421, 511, 434, 370, 387 and 412 and 399 respectively, whereas just over a week ago the province was reporting between 500 and 640 cases.

Province conducted 2,218 more tests than previous day

Today, the province completed 15,179 tests, which is encouragingly higher than 12,961 tested yesterday and the even lower numbers over the past several days. With increased testing capacity and continuing improvement to physical distancing measures, the cases of COVID-19 are slowly coming down, which has prompted the province to ease restrictions on some businesses beginning tonight at 12:01 am when garden centres and nurseries are allowed to open up with certain restrictions, followed by hardware stores on Saturday and retail stores that can operate curbside on Monday.

Long-term care homes report 48 more deaths

Sadly, things are not improving at long-term care homes as there have been 92 more deaths at the senior care homes over the past two days. Also, over 1,000 out of the 1,477 deaths have occurred in people over 80 with an additional 371 deaths reported in ages 60 to 79. Five staff members at long-term care centres have also lost their lives due to the virus. The total number of active cases in the care and retirement homes is 3,204 along with 1,605 staff members. 225 outbreaks, two more than yesterday have been reported in long-term care homes.

Hospitals have also reported 277 staff cases of COVID-19 which is six more since yesterday. There have also been five more deaths among hospital staff raising the death toll to 45. There now have been 69 outbreaks in Ontario hospitals, which is the same number of hospital outbreaks as yesterday.

Some encouraging news according to hospital stats provided by the Ontario Ministry of Health from May 6 as of 4 pm, the number of hospitalized patients in Ontario due to the virus has risen by just one to 1,033. Meanwhile, the number of patients in ICU has dropped by 11 over the past two days to 220 patients in ICUs. Today, there are also 155 patients currently on ventilators. Also of note, 3,131 of the total 19,121 cases are healthcare workers.

Ontario daily COVID-19 case counts past 17 days

If you take a look at the numbers over the past 14 days you will see that this past week saw an average of 366 new cases a day while the previous 7 days, the daily average was 472.

April 20 – 606, April 21 – 551, April 22 – 510, April 23 – 634, April 24 – 640, April 25 – 476, April 26 – 437, April 27 – 424, April 28 – 525, April 29 – 347, April 30 – 459, May 1 – 421, May 2 – 511, May 3 – 434, May 4 – 370, May 5 – 387, May 6 – 412, May 7 – 399

Greater Toronto Area and Toronto COVID-19 case numbers

Greater Toronto Area public health units now account for 60.8% of cases a percentage which has been going up steadily by .2% over the past several days. 12.2% of those people are hospitalized. of which 6,665 exist in Toronto, 2,674 in Peel, 503 in Halton, 1,107 in Durham, and 1,742 in York.

Meanwhile as of 3:45 pm today, Toronto Public Health says there were 249 more cases reported. Toronto now has 6,014 confirmed cases and 4,364 recoveries. Sadly, in total, 522 Torontonians have lost their lives to this coronavirus.

Today, Toronto Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Eileen de Villa said that Toronto is now in a position to relax some of the public health measures,

“In the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak we asked everyone to stay home and to only go out for essential needs. However, as we look forward to the post peak period of this outbreak, we are increasingly in a position to adjust our advice and approach to fighting this virus. This means starting to relax some of our public health measures as long as physical distancing is maintained.”

Dr. de Villa simplified her statement by using the example of a patient recovery from surgery, saying “when someone has surgery at first they must rest and stay in bed as they recover. As time progresses and as their condition improves, they are asked to slowly and gradually return to their regular activities. This is the same approach we are taking here with COVID19,” said Dr. de Villa.

This report includes the most current information available from the integrated Public Health
Information System (iPHIS) as of 4 p.m. May 6, 2020, from the Toronto Public Health Coronavirus Rapid Entry System (CORES) and the Ottawa Public Health COVID-19 Ottawa Database (The COD) as of 2 p.m. May 6, 2020.