Correspondence

March 22, 2020

maritstiles@gmail.com, brocktonneighbours@yahoogroups.com, diginfo@yahoogroups.com, Ana.Bailao@toronto.ca

To Marit Stiles MPP

Re the publicly available data: as of this morning, the Ontario government website has no specifics (gender, decade, travel or not, hospitalization or not) on 128 of the new 276 case numbers posted since March 17: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10zxqzXr9URPLhSunsVEFvkpVdk9UOkZMfwVvy3zxDTc/edit?ts=5e723daa#gid=0. It would be helpful if this was fixed.

Toronto Public Health, on the other hand, even though it does not list individual case case numbers, does tell the number of people with the Covid-19 illness in hospital citywide -- i.e. nine today, down from 10 yesterday, with 5 people in intensive care (same number as yesterday, presumably on a respirator) and one person who has died. Our CELOS website also logs those Toronto public health reports.

The Toronto reports may reduce one worry: that people in Toronto are not keeping a distance from each other, and therefore making infections worse. Certainly from my vantage point on my front porch on Havelock Street, and riding my bike in the neighbourhood, people who are not with their kids are keeping at least 6 feet apart -- often by one of them walking on the road! That would be a problem normally, since Havelock is usually busy with cars, but now the traffic is so slight that the pedestrians seem to be able to take back the street.

Back to the Ontario government reporting issue: during the earlier Ontario public health staff reports, almost all cases were listing as self-isolating at home. Now that the Ontario government website has so many non-specific "pending" reports, does that mean that more of the recent cases are actually sicker and therefore in hospital? If that's the case, it would be good for people to know.

Fingers crossed that you can help.

March 23, 2020

Reporter question for the Government of Ontario public health media representative David Jensen:

Is your ministry able to give more detailed information about covid19 cases on the webpage on these cases - https://www.ontario.ca/page/2019-novel-coronavirus -- for example, severity of the illness and whether they're hospitalized -- and if so, when will this information be available? During the earlier Ontario public health staff reports, almost all cases were listing as self-isolating at home. Now that the Ontario government website has so many non-specific "pending" reports, does that mean that more of the recent cases are actually sicker and therefore in hospital? If that's the case, it would be good for people to know.

Response:

We will be continuing to provide just those basic bits of information about confirmed cases.

When a case is marked pending, it means that we've been notified of a new positive case but that an investigation is underway to learn more. We provide more information online once it becomes available.

Reporter question:

Can you please send me the link where the earlier "pending" cases from the past four days are updated?

Response:

There isn’t such a link. At this time, we aren’t providing updates to these pending cases on the website.

Back to front page of Covid19 section