Ontario reports 625 new cases of COVID-19 amid worries we are headed for 1,000 a day

Ontario reported 625 new cases of amid warnings the province is on track for 1,000 daily in a couple of weeks — surpassing the recent high of 700 — depending on the impact of recent restrictions including shorter hours for bars and restaurants.

The next targets could be trouble spots for transmission such as banquet halls, indoor group fitness classes and workplaces with lax attitudes on allowing employees to come to work sick or to skip quarantines, chief medical officer Dr. David Williams said Wednesday.

“We need to tighten the belts…or we’re going to see a lot more cases,” he told a briefing at Queen’s Park.

Cases are doubling every 10 to 12 days, top provincial health officials said in presenting new computer modelling on the likely trajectory of the pandemic which shows Ontario on the same path as neighbouring Michigan and the Australian state of Victoria, where an overnight curfew starting at 8 p.m. was enacted for Melbourne.

“We are starting to see that sharp upward curve,” said Dr. Adalsteinn Brown, dean of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.

Premier Doug Ford said his cabinet is discussing the province’s next moves to slow the spread of the highly contagious virus because of the “deeply concerning” projection, but added “we aren’t rolling back today” as opposition parties called for quicker action.

“If these numbers keep rising we’ll see 200 to 300 patients in ICU (intensive care) beds per day. Folks, we have to work together to turn the tide in this fight,” the premier acknowledged after four deaths were reported for the second day in a row.

While the province is waiting a few more days to gauge the effect of shuttering strip joints and ordering earlier closures for bars and restaurants along with a Sept. 19 reduction in the maximum size of public gatherings to 10 indoors and 25 outdoors, “we’re going to start looking at other venues that are a problem,” said Williams.

Some banquet halls and workplaces are being “less than stringent” on enforcing guidelines such as crowd limits, mask wearing, physical distancing and staying home when sick, he added, with group fitness classes a problem because people are “breathing hard, working hard” in close quarters.

The briefing followed Monday’s spike to 700 new cases and another 554 Tuesday in a September surge that has seen daily infections rise from around 100 daily through August, raising concerns about how long schools will be able to remain open with cases rising in classrooms as well.

The Ontario Hospital Association, along with a number of doctors and epidemiologists have called on the government to take stricter measures before the spread of COVID-19 gets further out of hand, warning hospitals could eventually be swamped. The OHA, for example, is pushing for a return to Stage 2 in urban hot spots like Toronto.

While the trend has been for the majority of cases in people under 40, that growth is helping to spread the highly contagious in older age groups more likely to require medical care and hospitalization, provincial officials said. They cautioned that could limit the capacity to perform surgeries and other procedures backlogged from the first wave.

“We have seen this same pattern play out in Florida, France, Spain,” University of Toronto epidemiologist Dr. David Fisman said on social media. “You need leadership that understands these patterns and has the political courage to act when things don’t yet look horrible.”

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath echoed that, saying “we need to do it now.”

Ford and Williams said they are aiming for targeted actions based on provincial and local data to avoid widespread shutdowns unless absolutely necessary.

“You have to measure the impacts on peoples’ livelihoods,” Ford told reporters.

Ontario Health chief executive Matthew Anderson said several regions in the province outside larger cities have no or very few new cases, whereas hot spots like Peel and Ottawa are in situations where three per cent of people being tested are positive for COVID-19. Fisman said four per cent of people in their 20s being tested are positive.

The government’s fall preparedness plan released Wednesday states positivity rates should be kept below three per cent.

Officials at the briefing said hospitals can remain close to normal with fewer that 150 COVID-19 patients in intensive care but capacity is increasingly limited beyond that with 350 coronavirus ICU patients making normal operations “impossible,” meaning surgeries have to be postponed.

Hospitalizations have doubled to 150 in the last two weeks and there were 35 patients in ICU in Wednesday’s daily report, including 17 on ventilators. Intensive care patients peaked just below 300 in early April before the province hit a then-high of 640 new daily cases later in the month.

Another 52 cases of COVID-19 were reported in schools with the number of schools with cases rising by 32 to 282, with three schools closed temporarily.

Rob Ferguson is a Toronto-based reporter covering Ontario politics for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: