To avoid disaster, Toronto residents must continue doing everything possible to prevent spread of COVID-19: experts

Thestar.com
Oct. 16, 2020
David Rider

To avoid disaster, Toronto residents must continue doing everything possible to prevent the spread of COVID-19, despite an apparent improvement in some of the city’s pandemic indicators, virus experts say.

“Toronto Public Health continues to see substantial and concerning numbers of new cases, including in long-term care settings, and new hospitalizations daily,” said Dr. Vinita Dubey, an associate medical officer of health.

“We cannot drop our guard. As long as the virus is circulating in the community, it can and will continue to spread.”

The seven-day rate of new infections dropped during Toronto’s extended lockdown to an average of about 15 per day when the city entered Stage 3 reopening at the end of July.

That average for new reported daily infections grew slowly at first, then exploded to 286 by Oct. 1. The average then started dropping, to 204 by Oct. 8, followed by a rise to 209 as of last Saturday.

Toronto reported 254 new cases on Thursday.

The seven-day average for new daily COVID-19 hospitalizations rose to 12 on Oct. 2 before starting a multi-day slide to a daily average of six by Tuesday.

Toronto’s reproduction, or “R,” value, is the average number of people each newly infected resident will go on to infect. It indicates the pace of spread. Toronto’s R value of 1.2 last week dropped to 1 this week.

Experts say an R below 1 indicates the virus is on the wane.

One worrying change in Toronto’s online “dashboard” of COVID-19 indicators is active daily COVID-19 outbreaks in institutions, which dropped to 1 by mid-August. That number started rising and hasn’t stopped, hitting 21 by Tuesday.

Many of the 1,330 Torontonians who have died of COVID-19 were residents of seniors’ homes.

Amid exponential growth in new cases, Premier Doug Ford last Friday announced new measures for hotspots, including Toronto, such as a ban on indoor drinking and dining at eateries and bars, and a closure of fitness clubs.

“It is still too early to determine whether Toronto is moving in the right direction, as high case counts continue to be reported every day,” said Dubey, who noted more than a quarter of the city’s COVID-19 infections were reported in the past 30 days, and more than 15 per cent of them in the past two weeks.

What we do know, she said, is what “flattens the curve:” mask wearing, hand washing, physical distancing and venturing out only when necessary.

Ashleigh Tuite, an epidemiologist from the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, said Torontonians shouldn’t read much into the new-infection or R value figures, because recent changes in testing criteria and contact tracing could affect them.

The rise in outbreaks in long-term care homes is “concerning,” said Tuite. “It’s a reflection of community transmission.”

Chris Bauch, an applied mathematics expert at the University of Waterloo who has researched COVID-19’s spread, said: “I don’t think we are out of the woods quite yet.”

The R value can fluctuate in ways that don’t reflect the actual spread of the virus, he said. Also, Toronto still doesn’t know if people who gathered to celebrate Thanksgiving weekend will accelerate the spread of COVID-19.

“It’s good to see that cases are not rising as quickly as they were in September,” he said, “but we need to wait until next week to be sure that the current measures are having an effect.”