(04-22-2020, 08:33 PM)tomh009 Wrote: There are roughly 4,500 non-hospitalized active cases in Ontario right now; that's just less than the last nine days' new case count. That's a bit less than the median confirmation-to-discharge period in Singapore (see below) but it may be that Singapore was testing people sooner after the infection.
https://towardsdatascience.com/visual-no...d7f2e1d0a0
Unfortunately my recent experience gives me very little faith in that number of active non-hospitalized cases. I'm a close contact of someone that has tested positive, who I'm currently caring for, and I've recently developed symptoms, so I almost certainly have it. I spent hours on Monday and Tuesday getting bounced around on the phone between Waterloo Public Health, Hamilton Public Health, Telehealth Ontario, random walk-in clinics, Grand River Hospital, and more. I was given clearly incorrect information by Telehealth about how to be tested, more wrong info by Waterloo Public Health, and at one point told by Waterloo Public Health "There's no treatment for Covid-19, are you sure you really need to be tested? We agree you meet the criteria, but it's going to involve [a lot of paperwork and phone calls], maybe you should just wait and see?"
After over a dozen phone calls and many hours of waiting for callbacks I did finally manage to arrange to get tested, but it's a two day wait that I'm still waiting for. Luckily I'm working from home with a very understanding employer, that's willing to give me all the time off I need to deal with this. But as someone with relatively mild symptoms, I totally understand why a lot of people in my situation would just give up and not be tested. Certainly the stress of dealing with that wasn't what I needed right now when I should be resting and recovering.
If the roadblocks to getting tested are so extreme I find it hard to believe that our case counts are anything but a fiction. The hospitalization numbers give me more hope, I assume people would go to the ER if necessary, but it's hardly the level of reassuring I'd like it to be. I could write a whole essay on the failures of Waterloo Public Health, who repeatedly sent me elsewhere on wild goose chases despite agreeing I should be tested.