Province’s updated modelling on COVID-19 spread, better than expected
Ontario officials have released updated modelling of the spread of COVID-19 which predict that the total cumulative cases during this wave will only be less than 20,000 – a huge difference from what they have first projected.
The modelling suggests that the pandemic has peaked in the province in terms of community spread. Over the last couple of days numbers of new, identified cases have remained under the same range. Today, Ontario recorded an increase of 606 cases – a new single-day high, but testing has just started to slowly improve. Officials say there have been almost 9,000 tests conducted in the last 24 hours.
Last April 3, Ontario health officials developed a best-case and a worst-case scenario for the province, such as how many patients they expect to be in ICU, and hospitalized.
Here, we compare the previously projected scenarios made early this month and the data that we have today:
- Patients in ICU worst-case scenario, over 1,000
- Patients in ICU today, 247
- Hospitalized worst-case scenario, over 1,500
- Current number of hospitalized patients, 809
Although there are still outbreaks on long-term care homes and homeless shelters, health experts said that physically distancing, and staying home have been a great help to combat the widespread of the virus and must be continuously practised in order to flatten the curve.
Read the full modelling report here.