Canada’s COVID-19 caseload surpasses 100K

Canada’s struggle against the COVID-19 pandemic passed a bleak milestone on Thursday, with data from one of the hardest-hit provinces pushing the national caseload over the 100,000 threshold.

The national tally, reached after Ontario reported 173 news cases, secured Canada’s place among the 20 countries hardest-hit by the novel coronavirus since its global spread began just six months ago.

Medical experts say the Canadian figures highlight both successes and failures in Canada’s response to the pandemic, noting provincial and territorial health systems remained able to cope with the crisis despite governments’ early reluctance to impose widespread closures and lack of preparation for a robust testing regime.

“It could have been much more than that had we not implemented the measures we did when we did,” said Dr. Susy Hota, medical director of infection prevention and control at Toronto’s University Health Network. “We did not overwhelm the system in that initial wave that hit the country.”

Hota said the medical community was awake to the possibility of a serious medical crisis ahead of the population at large, who for weeks were told that a new form of coronavirus originating in the Chinese city of Wuhan posed a minimal to low risk to Canadians.

Early literature on the disease eventually dubbed COVID-19 sounded tentative alarm bells for doctors before Ottawa launched an information blitz aimed at curbing its spread on Jan. 24, she said.

Government assurances that the disease had not reached Canadian shores had to be abandoned the next day when a Toronto man returning from a visit to Wuhan was identified as the country’s first COVID-19 patient. Three days later, another case was diagnosed in British Columbia.

The small number of cases that cropped up in those provinces over the month of February were all linked to recent travel to either China or Iran and not believed to pose an imminent health risk. Patients were urged to self-isolate at home, and public health officials began ramping up calls for proper hand hygiene.

But matters started to change in late February and early March when cases began appearing in other provinces, starting with the one that would become the epicentre of Canada’s outbreak.

Quebec has recorded the highest number of cases and fatalities since its first case announced on Feb. 27. The province’s spring break — the first week of March — has been widely cited as a root cause of the severe outbreak in that province.

The World Health Organization’s March 11 decision to classify the virus as a global pandemic touched off a wave of closures and emergency public health measures around the world, and it wasn’t long before Canadian officials got on board.

On March 14, the federal government urged Canadians abroad to hasten home, and the country’s top public health officer shifted the government’s message about the virus the next day amid rising cases of COVID-19 in at least five provinces.

“Our window to flatten the curve of the epidemic is narrow,” Dr. Theresa Tam said at a March 15 news conference. “We all need to act now. COVID-19 is a serious public health threat.”