April 2, 2020 Ontario MOH press briefing

Reporter often asking the same questions as in other days.

Dr.Yaffe says that there are now 26 outbreaks in long-term care and 19 people have died there. Also there are 8 outbreaks in retirement homes. She emphasizes that the jump is because the definition has been changed from the former outbreak definition applied to the flu.

Question about not enough ICU beds available: Dr.Williams says that there are 167 people in Covid-related ICU beds, and there are just under 3000 ICU beds in the province, but they are of course also used for non-Covid patients, e.g. accidents.

Says the labs have no backlog except for provincial labs -- and those are basically just the backlogs of a day -- so caught up in testing. Not broadening the testing definitions yet.

Says the modelling scenarios will be presented tomorrow. Categories will be light, medium, and worst-case predictions. Uses weather predictions as a comparison -- if it forecasts a blizzard, that may not happen but it's good to be prepared.

Also the message today is that data needs to be excamined closely to check its quality.

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