The COVID-19 pandemic

[taylortbb]

I agree we're not in a position to open anything. But I think things should be moving in that direction, and I'm concerned they're not.

In any case, my 48 hour saga with public health wasn't about convincing them to test me. Every call started with them going down the testing criteria, and concluding that I met multiple criteria for priority testing, and that I should be tested. It was a crazy 48 hour wild goose chase going from public health telling me "you should be tested" to finally navigating the bureaucracy enough that I was in touch with someone who actually had the authority to authorize the test public health said I needed. Surely you agree that's not how it's supposed to work? We should be testing the people that meet the criteria, not giving them bureaucratic gauntlets to discourage it.

Sounds like a mixed-up process. Ideally, it would be something like “you should have a test. Do you agree?”

“Yes.”

“Can I just confirm your address is [address from health card]?”

[…]

“Can I confirm you will be at home tomorrow morning?”

[…]

“The testing unit will arrive sometime tomorrow morning. Please have your health card ready.”

Or alternately it could be conversation about what location you would like to go to and set up an appointment. But I think there is something to be said for having health officials do the travelling.

That would make lots of sense, except that public health isn't generally authorized to order Covid-19 tests. Provincial rules say public health agencies can only order tests for people without health cards, and for people that are identified through their own contract tracing. Because I was identified through Hamilton's contact tracing Waterloo can't send me for a test. Apparently even if they tried the province would reject the test, because Waterloo didn't identify me. That lead to talking to Hamilton public health, but they can't authorize a test for me in KW. They said if I drove down to Hamilton they might be able to, though they're only supposed to test people in Hamilton, but that obviously I should try KW first.

The only other route is to be referred by a doctor to the Covid-19 assessment centre, which is a converted walk-in clinic beside T&T. Apparently the testing centres at the hospitals are now reserved exlusively for employees of the hospitals, though Telehealth still tried to send me to the GRH testing centre without an appointment. The problem there is I don't have a family doctor. Waterloo Public Health just told me to call random walk-in clinics until I found one that would refer me. However, many aren't doing phone appointments, and those that are just told me to either call public health or GRH. Apparently until recently testing was authorized by public health, and no one knows about this new referral process.

Eventually I found the phone appointment number for the clinic that's been converted in to the assessment centre. They seem to be the only clinic around that's actually aware of the new procedure and was able to refer me. I finally got tested earlier today.

[danbrotherston]

We aren't in a position to re-open anything.  It wouldn't matter if we were swabbing the entire population three times a day right now.  Contact tracing is the key, but we can't even contact trace everyone who has it, testing isn't the limitation there.

Nobody--besides nutjob americans (yes, the POTUS and Governors) are saying things should be reopened now.

Basically being worried that we won't be able to reopen things whenever it becomes possible...certainly not now...because we aren't doing enough testing right now...doesn't make any more sense than a month ago arguing that we shouldn't be worried because there weren't that many cases then.  The world is dynamic, these things will change.

I agree we're not in a position to open anything. But I think things should be moving in that direction, and I'm concerned they're not.

In any case, my 48 hour saga with public health wasn't about convincing them to test me. Every call started with them going down the testing criteria, and concluding that I met multiple criteria for priority testing, and that I should be tested. It was a crazy 48 hour wild goose chase going from public health telling me "you should be tested" to finally navigating the bureaucracy enough that I was in touch with someone who actually had the authority to authorize the test public health said I needed. Surely you agree that's not how it's supposed to work? We should be testing the people that meet the criteria, not giving them bureaucratic gauntlets to discourage it.

Why do you feel that they are not though? We've seen an increase in both the capacity for tests, as well as the number of tests done, and also a losening of chriteria for being tested. I understand that you had a bad experience, and clearly highlight a limitation in the testing system, but that is a single datapoint and does not show a trend--also perfect is the enemy of good, how frequent an issue is what you describe, I don't know, but at a certain point, there will be people who say "the system is broken because it didn't deal with my 1 in a million situation"....in public health, it's all statistics, individuals don't matter.

[taylortbb]

I agree we're not in a position to open anything. But I think things should be moving in that direction, and I'm concerned they're not.

In any case, my 48 hour saga with public health wasn't about convincing them to test me. Every call started with them going down the testing criteria, and concluding that I met multiple criteria for priority testing, and that I should be tested. It was a crazy 48 hour wild goose chase going from public health telling me "you should be tested" to finally navigating the bureaucracy enough that I was in touch with someone who actually had the authority to authorize the test public health said I needed. Surely you agree that's not how it's supposed to work? We should be testing the people that meet the criteria, not giving them bureaucratic gauntlets to discourage it.

Why do you feel that they are not though? We've seen an increase in both the capacity for tests, as well as the number of tests done, and also a losening of chriteria for being tested. I understand that you had a bad experience, and clearly highlight a limitation in the testing system, but that is a single datapoint and does not show a trend--also perfect is the enemy of good, how frequent an issue is what you describe, I don't know, but at a certain point, there will be people who say "the system is broken because it didn't deal with my 1 in a million situation"....in public health, it's all statistics, individuals don't matter.

I don't think transmission between adjacent cities is a 1 in a million scenario, nor is not having a family doctor. Yet both seem to present substantial roadblocks to getting tested. You're right I don't have comprehensive data on the problem, but one rarely does. Ontario regulations that prohibit public health agencies from ordering tests seem pretty clearly to be needlessly bureaucratic, and I can't fathom what purpose they serve. Surely a public health nurse is qualified to assess that someone needs to be referred to an assessment centre? Once I did talk to a doctor all their assesment consisted of was running through the questions prepared by pubic health.

[MidTowner]

First, I don't think that's why people are fixated on testing. If they were, they'd be saying, we need more testing to lift restrictions. Instead most are saying something like "these numbers are meaningless/fake news because they don't do enough testing"--fundamentally different.

And second, "We are testing a very small number of people"...this isn't true either, or at least is totally subjective, I don't call 10,000 per day a "small number". The question is whether we are testing enough, and I trust the experts to know how many we need to test (basically enough for a random sampling of the population + those with symptoms--to watch for community spread--as well as enough to contact trace everyone who does have it--which is dependent on the number of infections), and shockingly I trust the government to actually follow those recommendations--which is why I'm not freaking out about those numbers, we aren't ready to lift restrictions yet anyway--there are other things that need to happen first as well--just like the virus itself, what is happening now, isn't relevant to what will be happening in a week or in a month.  Just like I wasn't unconcerned because we only had a few dozen cases a few months ago, because I knew it would get worse, I am also not concerned that we are doing maybe half the tests we need to be doing when we lift restrictions now because we won't be doing that for some time.

That first is a really good point; 10,000 per day (current level) may well be a perfectly adequate testing rate, depending on how many infections we see. But I am concerned that public health and the provincial government don't identify how many tests will be required for contact tracing when restrictions are eased/lifted, based on the number of infections foreseen.

I am concerned if we are doing half (or whatever fraction) of that number of tests, but it's because I think we should be lifting restrictions soon, or aiming to. But that's my own opinion, and different people will have different ideas of how long these types of restrictions can be in place. I personally am at a loss as to how we can keep up restrictions even close to what we have now for several more months- it seems like the impact on people's livelihoods and well-being will become intolerable long before then. So I really do hope we have sufficient testing capacity before too long.

[danbrotherston]

Why do you feel that they are not though? We've seen an increase in both the capacity for tests, as well as the number of tests done, and also a losening of chriteria for being tested. I understand that you had a bad experience, and clearly highlight a limitation in the testing system, but that is a single datapoint and does not show a trend--also perfect is the enemy of good, how frequent an issue is what you describe, I don't know, but at a certain point, there will be people who say "the system is broken because it didn't deal with my 1 in a million situation"....in public health, it's all statistics, individuals don't matter.

I don't think transmission between adjacent cities is a 1 in a million scenario, nor is not having a family doctor. Yet both seem to present substantial roadblocks to getting tested. You're right I don't have comprehensive data on the problem, but one rarely does. Ontario regulations that prohibit public health agencies from ordering tests seem pretty clearly to be needlessly bureaucratic, and I can't fathom what purpose they serve. Surely a public health nurse is qualified to assess that someone needs to be referred to an assessment centre? Once I did talk to a doctor all their assesment consisted of was running through the questions prepared by pubic health.

I don't think so either, and as someone who only recently got a family Dr. who I now can't really see, that too. I explicitly did not say that I thought it was 1 in a million, although I've heard plenty enough stories of people who think they should have tests, who probably are one a million "I've got a runny nose and and ichy leg, I think I have COVID", that's what I mean. There are always going to be people who think they should get a test, who don't need one.

I agree there are certainly bureaucratic issues, I hope they solve them, but I see progress.

As for Doctors running down checklists, you'd be shocked by how much of a doctor's job is nothing more than checklists--not that I don't respect doctors, I do, and honestly, the parts of their jobs which are more than that, are so critical, but it is a little weird how much of their diagnosis are done via a flow chart.

[panamaniac]

First, I don't think that's why people are fixated on testing. If they were, they'd be saying, we need more testing to lift restrictions. Instead most are saying something like "these numbers are meaningless/fake news because they don't do enough testing"--fundamentally different.

And second, "We are testing a very small number of people"...this isn't true either, or at least is totally subjective, I don't call 10,000 per day a "small number". The question is whether we are testing enough, and I trust the experts to know how many we need to test (basically enough for a random sampling of the population + those with symptoms--to watch for community spread--as well as enough to contact trace everyone who does have it--which is dependent on the number of infections), and shockingly I trust the government to actually follow those recommendations--which is why I'm not freaking out about those numbers, we aren't ready to lift restrictions yet anyway--there are other things that need to happen first as well--just like the virus itself, what is happening now, isn't relevant to what will be happening in a week or in a month.  Just like I wasn't unconcerned because we only had a few dozen cases a few months ago, because I knew it would get worse, I am also not concerned that we are doing maybe half the tests we need to be doing when we lift restrictions now because we won't be doing that for some time.

That first is a really good point; 10,000 per day (current level) may well be a perfectly adequate testing rate, depending on how many infections we see. But I am concerned that public health and the provincial government don't identify how many tests will be required for contact tracing when restrictions are eased/lifted, based on the number of infections foreseen.

I am concerned if we are doing half (or whatever fraction) of that number of tests, but it's because I think we should be lifting restrictions soon, or aiming to. But that's my own opinion, and different people will have different ideas of how long these types of restrictions can be in place. I personally am at a loss as to how we can keep up restrictions even close to what we have now for several more months- it seems like the impact on people's livelihoods and well-being will become intolerable long before then. So I really do hope we have sufficient testing capacity before too long.

I believe that Ford commited to getting it up to 14,000 or 15,000 a day by the end of the month, did he not?  Although that doesn't change the basic point.

[tomh009]

The problem is that we need mass testing in order to ease the very strict restrictions we are living under right now. This is why people are fixated on the levels of testing, and I think that's valid.
(...)
We're not testing everyone. We're not testing even near everyone. And everyone knows that, as a result, the true number of cases is many times higher than the reported number. That's not the problem. The problem is, we are testing a very small number of people, and that won't be enough when restrictions are loosened and the spread naturally increases as a result.

It's not necessary to test everyone. It's not even possible right now. I believe Portugal has the highest rate of testing per capita (outside some tiny countries like Luxembourg and UAE), and even they have tested only about 3% of the population. Canada is at about 1.6%.

What the ratio of actual infections to confirmed cases is, it's anyone's guess. NYC preliminary results say 20% of population (that would be about 10:1), Austrian results say 2:1, Santa Clara County came up with 80:1. The rate of false positives in any given antibody test is critical.

[tomh009]

640 new cases in Ontario today for a 5.0% increase; a drop in the percentage but another small increased daily number of new cases yet. 407 recovered and 50 dead for a net addition of 183 active cases. There are now 5,669 active cases given 7,087 recoveries and 763 deaths.  2287 confirmed positives to date among LTC facility residents. 

207,040 people tested to date, now over 12,000 tests per day for the first time. 910 cases currently hospitalized (+23) and 243 in the ICU (+10).

Age breakdown:

• 0-59: 55.2% of cases, 5.1% of deaths
  
• 60-79: 22.4% of cases, 27.4% of deaths
  
• 80+: 22.4% of cases, 67.5% of deaths
  

Quebec added 778 cases today, with the rate of increase now down to 3.6%. 185,632 tests done to date, about 4,800 in the last 24h. 1233 currently hospitalized (+11) and 227 in ICU (+20). 4852 confirmed positives to date among LTC facility residents.

Age breakdown:

• 0-59: 58.3% of cases, 2.5% of deaths
  
• 60-79: 19.1% of cases, 25.7% of deaths
  
• 80+: 22.6% of cases, 71.5% of deaths
  

March
2020-03-23 778 (+258%) 2020-03-24 1040 (+34%) 2020-03-25 1339 (+29%) 2020-03-26 1629 (+22%) 2020-03-27 2021 (+24%)
2020-03-28 2498 (+24%) 2020-03-29 2840 (+13%) 2020-03-30 3430 (+21%) 2020-03-31 4162 (+21%)
April
2020-04-01 4611 (+11%) 2020-04-02 5518 (+20%) 2020-04-03 6101 (+8%) 2020-04-04 6997 (+15%) 2020-04-05 7944 (+14%)
2020-04-06 8580 (+8%) 2020-04-07 9340 (+9%) 2020-04-08 10031 (+7%) 2020-04-09 10912 (+9%) 2020-04-10 11677 (+7%)
2020-04-11 12292 (+5%) 2020-04-12 12846 (+5%) 2020-04-13 13557 (+6%) 2020-04-14 14248 (+5%) 2020-04-15 14860 (+5%)
2020-04-16 15857 (+7%) 2020-04-17 16798 (+6%) 2020-04-18 17521 (+4%) 2020-04-19 18357 (+5%) 2020-04-20 19319 (+5%)
2020-04-21 20126 (+4%) 2020-04-22 20965 (+4%) 2020-04-23 21838 (+4%) 2020-04-24 22616 (

[jamincan]

I don't think transmission between adjacent cities is a 1 in a million scenario, nor is not having a family doctor. Yet both seem to present substantial roadblocks to getting tested. You're right I don't have comprehensive data on the problem, but one rarely does. Ontario regulations that prohibit public health agencies from ordering tests seem pretty clearly to be needlessly bureaucratic, and I can't fathom what purpose they serve. Surely a public health nurse is qualified to assess that someone needs to be referred to an assessment centre? Once I did talk to a doctor all their assesment consisted of was running through the questions prepared by pubic health.

I don't think so either, and as someone who only recently got a family Dr. who I now can't really see, that too. I explicitly did not say that I thought it was 1 in a million, although I've heard plenty enough stories of people who think they should have tests, who probably are one a million "I've got a runny nose and and ichy leg, I think I have COVID", that's what I mean. There are always going to be people who think they should get a test, who don't need one.

I agree there are certainly bureaucratic issues, I hope they solve them, but I see progress.

As for Doctors running down checklists, you'd be shocked by how much of a doctor's job is nothing more than checklists--not that I don't respect doctors, I do, and honestly, the parts of their jobs which are more than that, are so critical, but it is a little weird how much of their diagnosis are done via a flow chart.

Boiling a differential diagnosis procedure down to using a flow chart is simplifying to a rather absurd degree. There is years of knowledge and experience that are needed to make a proper differential diagnosis. That's like saying that flying airplanes is little more than using a checklist.

[danbrotherston]

I don't think so either, and as someone who only recently got a family Dr. who I now can't really see, that too. I explicitly did not say that I thought it was 1 in a million, although I've heard plenty enough stories of people who think they should have tests, who probably are one a million "I've got a runny nose and and ichy leg, I think I have COVID", that's what I mean. There are always going to be people who think they should get a test, who don't need one.

I agree there are certainly bureaucratic issues, I hope they solve them, but I see progress.

As for Doctors running down checklists, you'd be shocked by how much of a doctor's job is nothing more than checklists--not that I don't respect doctors, I do, and honestly, the parts of their jobs which are more than that, are so critical, but it is a little weird how much of their diagnosis are done via a flow chart.

Boiling a differential diagnosis procedure down to using a flow chart is simplifying to a rather absurd degree. There is years of knowledge and experience that are needed to make a proper differential diagnosis. That's like saying that flying airplanes is little more than using a checklist.

Flying an airplane is mostly just checklists--there is a reason that computers can do most of it.

I did not say that following a flow chart is all of their jobs, but it is a surprisingly large amount of it. And nobody is saying it doesn't take training, but it is nonetheless the case that a large amount of the job is a mechanical process of applying knowledge gained by others to peoples situation.

Further, it does not devalue peoples work--it's simply realistic. Using checklists and proceedures is how we enable doctors to determine the best treatment for someone, or the best way to land a plane with a specific type of failure in a reliable way. Drs use charts to ensure that we are using data to guide the best care people get.

You will find that this applies to more careers than you might think.  We've had this conversation about transportation/civic engineering before. Virtually everything our transportation engineers do is simply applying existing engineering designs and standards onto our city. The problem I have with how city engineers do it, is their models are oversimplied, lack context and generally have very little to no evidnece for them.  Parking policy for example, is almost 100% voodoo. The effect is that we have dangerous, wasteful, expensive roads that make our cities worse. I feel those engineers should use more of their own expertise.

The medical profession on the other hand has a very rigorous process for developing treatments and proving their effectiveness.  But just because most of one's job is applying previous medical knowledge, statistical tests, "flow charts" doesn't mean that it isn't valuable or helpful...and frankly, Drs. are more open to adjusting treatment for individual needs than our traffic engineers (at least the ones at the region) are about adjusting designs to specific context.

[MacBerry]

Sorry to be pedantic, but you mean World War II. In the first world war, Canada saw something over 60,000 deaths, and 150,000 wounded.

I really want to play devil's advocate, though, and say that 287,000 Canadians died last year, 2019. If the 22,000 deaths all occurred in the year 2020, this virus would be the third leading cause of death this year (the second leading cause, heart diseases, kills over 50,000). It might be unknowable how many, but at least some of those deaths would have occurred in the same period in the absence of the virus.

Those are just facts, not opinions. I have to say that I'm not entirely sure what the proper context to think about these things is.

We're in uncharted waters, so there is probably no saying with any kind of confidence by anyone what the real consequences of our actions will be. We've done serious damage to our economy and society so far, but the long-term consequences to mental health and emotional and material well being can only be guessed.

My personal opinion is that shutting down large swaths of society and the economy as we have seems prudent. But it seems to me that most people are taking their responsibility to curtail the spread of the virus by isolating themselves pretty seriously, and so I think enforcing these guidelines/orders with police is unnecessary and highly risky. Ultimately, I don't think it's even productive from the perspective of slowing the spread: people will do many things when told it's their duty, but when ordered to under threat of force will focus more of their energy on just not getting caught.

We all want to do what we can to help save lives. It is inevitable that people die, and that people will unfortunately die in this pandemic, though. If we opt to live in a police state (say) to try to minimize that loss of life, we may wind up doing harm to our society that will not be easily repaired once this pandemic is passed.

I disagree with the notion that "we are in uncharted waters"

We are 20 years in the new century. Within these 20 years we’ve had 3 economic crashes. The first being the so called Dot-com crash. We then had the sub prime mortgage crisis in 2008/9, and here we are with the coronavirus crisis in 2020.

I understand why these crisis’s have those names. The reason is, a desperate effort to focus everyone’s attention on the external cause of these three crisis’s.

The point I’m trying to get to is that, in order to have an economic crash, you can’t explain it from some external factor.

The dot com crisis was set off by the fact that the stock prices of many companies were in the stratosphere. Likewise in 2008, we heard about all these people who got mortgages that they shouldn’t have gotten, and couldn’t afford to make the payments, etc etc. And now we have a viral pandemic.

Here’s what shouldn’t be odd news.
Overpriced stocks have recurred in the history of capitalism countless times. Failures of large numbers of people to make mortgage payments have happened repeatedly in the history of capitalism

Pandemics are not new. The worst one was in 1918. In recent times we’ve had SARS, MERS, Ebola.

Our scientific community is wrapped up in anticipating viral pandemics.

Here’s my point,
Capitalism should have, could have, and if it were properly run, would have prepared for and been able to manage each and every one of those events just like it was successful in managing them in previous history.

Calling it the crisis of X or Y is an attempt to divert attention from this question: why was capitalism so incapable?

It gives the lie that a country like America has the greatest economy in the world. That the economy was in great shape.

An economy in great shape does not collapse when it is confronted with crisis’s of this sort.

It either has the resilience, it either has the capability, or it doesn’t.

So what was the problem?

To prepare for a viral pandemic, everyone in healthcare knows exactly what we need: early detection of the virus, having enough PPE to deal with this recurring problem of a viral pandemic.

Either producing or importing PPE, ventilators, having enough personnel, hospital beds, etc.

These things need to be produced, stock piled and distributed according to the need of the pop.

All of this is very well known, so why was this not done?

Answer: it is **not** profitable to produce huge numbers of PPE and have them sitting in a warehouse. It is **not** profitable to stock pile beds. It is **not** profitable to stockpile tests.

Why not? Because that’s not how profit works. The system needs the money to turnover as fast as possible. This is the reason why nobody produced these essential things and stockpiled them.

It’s possible for the government to admit that the private profit system is a big fat **failure** in coping with crisis’s and then to come in and compensate for the private and capitalistic sectors’ failures by taking active steps.

Whether we like it or not America’s economy is the largest economy in the world. Their dollar is the worlds dollar. And their economy shapes ours.
America cannot get its head around the fact that private capitalism is a big fat failure. That it needs the government to come in and compensate for its failures.

This is not just because of the leadership of trump, that is a mistake, this is also president Obama, bush, Clinton, etc. All of them, to various degrees of course.

We had a private failure, compounded by a public failure ending up being complicit with this entire mess.

Capitalism in America, the private sector and the government it owns, failed to protect public health.

It is then first and foremost a failure of capitalism to perform at the basic function of protecting public health.

Here’s the irony of it all,
What the private sector did and what the government allowed them to do, was to make private profit. It was more profitable for them to do other things, than to accumulate masks, gowns, ventilators, beds, etc.

What was profitable was **not** what public health demanded.

We have already lost, many times over, the wealth that would have been spent to accumulate the stockpiles of all the equipment that we could have ever dreamed necessary.

Therefore there is no other conclusion then this:

The f*ck up that was performed here was an exercise in gross inefficiency.

It was inefficient not to produce those medical supplies, it was inefficient not to stockpile them.

Capitalism was **efficient** in producing profit, and **inefficient** in protecting public health.

Therefore the claim in economic textbooks that profit maximization is the royal road to efficiency, is now definitively proven **wrong**

Capitalism is what lies at the core of the failure of this economic system, to minimally perform a basic requirement of any economic system, which is to protect public health.

The answer that “we didn’t know this virus was coming” is either stupid or perverse.

Capitalism does not perform adequately.

The real question we are left with is: why the hell do the people of the United States accept a system that works this badly

Excellent read of the reality of 20th and 21st Century economics of the "isms" world for that matter. Your writing captures and paraphrases the works and ideas of David Harvey writings. Marx has always been misappropriated by the capitalists as the enemy of the state, while they gathered all the loot. Awesome read!

[ijmorlan]

Excellent read of the reality of 20th and 21st Century economics of the "isms" world for that matter. Your writing captures and paraphrases the works and ideas of David Harvey writings. Marx has always been misappropriated by the capitalists as the enemy of the state, while they gathered all the loot. Awesome read!

Great sentence!

I would suggest that a distinction between crony capitalism and large-scale ownership of government by large and wealthy organizations on the one hand, and the freedom of individuals to engage in commercial activity on the other, needs to be drawn.

Somebody who likes food starting a restaurant is practicing capitalism. Somebody renting out their spare bedroom, or adding an apartment wing onto their house, is practicing capitalism. A farmer purchasing labour saving equipment to improve the yield of their farm is practicing capitalism.

I doubt you can come up with a better way of providing day-to-day goods than some form of capitalism. Where it falls down is if it is either unfettered capitalism, or even worse, if it is highly regulated for ordinary people wanting to improve their situation but unregulated for large companies engaging in questionable dealing. Additionally, there are long-term and strategic considerations that require central planning. The stockpiling of medical equipment is one of these.

[tomh009]

Only 476 new cases in Ontario today for a 4.5% increase; it's the fewest new cases since 12 April. 422 recovered and 48 dead for a net addition of just six (6!) active cases. There are now 5,675 active cases given 7,509 recoveries and 811 deaths.  2455 confirmed positives to date among LTC facility residents, so 160 of today's 476 new cases are LTC residents. 

217,618 people tested to date, just under 11,000 tests for the day. 925 cases currently hospitalized (+15) and 245 in the ICU (+2). ICU as a percentage has dropped from 38% three weeks ago to 26% now, pretty consistently each day. I think it's safe to say that the severe cases are still as severe, so most likely the hospitals are now accepting some more mild cases than before, increasing the overall hospital population while the ICU stays stable.

Quebec added 651 cases today, with the rate of increase down to a record-low 2.9%. 190,765 tests done to date, about 5,100 in the last 24h. 1509 currently hospitalized (+276) and 217 in ICU (-10). Total hospitalization number continues to look unreliable. 5267 confirmed positives to date among LTC facility residents (+415).

March
2020-03-23 778 (+258%) 2020-03-24 1040 (+34%) 2020-03-25 1339 (+29%) 2020-03-26 1629 (+22%) 2020-03-27 2021 (+24%)
2020-03-28 2498 (+24%) 2020-03-29 2840 (+13%) 2020-03-30 3430 (+21%) 2020-03-31 4162 (+21%)
April
2020-04-01 4611 (+11%) 2020-04-02 5518 (+20%) 2020-04-03 6101 (+8%) 2020-04-04 6997 (+15%) 2020-04-05 7944 (+14%)
2020-04-06 8580 (+8%) 2020-04-07 9340 (+9%) 2020-04-08 10031 (+7%) 2020-04-09 10912 (+9%) 2020-04-10 11677 (+7%)
2020-04-11 12292 (+5%) 2020-04-12 12846 (+5%) 2020-04-13 13557 (+6%) 2020-04-14 14248 (+5%) 2020-04-15 14860 (+5%)
2020-04-16 15857 (+7%) 2020-04-17 16798 (+6%) 2020-04-18 17521 (+4%) 2020-04-19 18357 (+5%) 2020-04-20 19319 (+5%)
2020-04-21 20126 (+4%) 2020-04-22 20965 (+4%) 2020-04-23 21838 (+4%) 2020-04-24 22616 (+4%) 2020-04-25 23267 (+3%)

[panamaniac]

Only 476 new cases in Ontario today for a 4.5% increase; it's the fewest new cases since 12 April. 422 recovered and 48 dead for a net addition of just six (6!) active cases. There are now 5,675 active cases given 7,509 recoveries and 811 deaths.  2455 confirmed positives to date among LTC facility residents, so 160 of today's 476 new cases are LTC residents. 

217,618 people tested to date, just under 11,000 tests for the day. 925 cases currently hospitalized (+15) and 245 in the ICU (+2). ICU as a percentage has dropped from 38% three weeks ago to 26% now, pretty consistently each day. I think it's safe to say that the severe cases are still as severe, so most likely the hospitals are now accepting some more mild cases than before, increasing the overall hospital population while the ICU stays stable.

Quebec data later today.

What's Ontario's track record on weekend reporting?  Have they been accurate, or do the results tend to be understated on the weekends?

[tomh009]

Only 476 new cases in Ontario today for a 4.5% increase; it's the fewest new cases since 12 April. 422 recovered and 48 dead for a net addition of just six (6!) active cases. There are now 5,675 active cases given 7,509 recoveries and 811 deaths.  2455 confirmed positives to date among LTC facility residents, so 160 of today's 476 new cases are LTC residents. 

What's Ontario's track record on weekend reporting?  Have they been accurate, or do the results tend to be understated on the weekends?

The data is extracted directly from the regional integrated health-care systems so there should be no significant delays. And today's numbers were actually extracted at 4 PM on Friday.