Ontario is reporting 409 cases of #COVID19 as more than 41,800 tests were completed. 75 percent of the new cases were in the province’s three COVID hot spots. Locally, there are 204 new cases in Toronto with 66 in Peel and 40 in Ottawa. 65% of today’s cases are in people under the age of 40. There was one death recorded overnight. Hospitalizations, ICU cases and ventilated cases were virtually unchanged. Despite saying Ontario is “clearly headed down the wrong path,” infectious disease specialist Dr. Isaac Bogoch told CTV News Toronto that back in the earlier stages of the pandemic, testing capacity wasn’t nearly what it is now.
“Our ability to identify cases has gone up dramatically,” Bogoch said. “There is a better reflection of the ground truth now compared to then. If we were doing this degree of testing back then, we would have seen far more cases.”
“Remember, we were turning people away from testing centres.”
Bogoch said the case count was likely several times higher than what was reported each day back when testing capacity was lower.
“Is it a perfectly accurate picture now? Of course it isn’t,” Bogoch said. “But it’s a much more accurate picture based on the current testing capacity.”
The last time Ontario’s new COVID case count was above 400 was June 7 with 415 new cases reported, but that day only 19,374 tests had been conducted; meaning the positivity rate was 2.1 percent. Yesterdays numbers show 409 new cases with 41,800 tests for a positivity rate of 0.98 percent—less than half the positivity rate of the June figures.
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