Canada’s chief public health officer says this coming week will be a crucial time during which public health officials will start to see if the aggressive measures taken to prevent the spread of the coronavirus are working.
Chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam says the impact of physical distancing measures will become clearer this week. 1:37
Canada’s top doctor says this coming week will be a crucial time during which public health officials will start to see if the aggressive physical distancing measures taken to prevent the spread of the coronavirus are working.
Dr. Theresa Tam said she is keeping a close eye on Ontario, Quebec and Alberta — provinces where the coronavirus is spreading within communities — to see if there will be a decrease in the rate of new confirmed cases, as British Columbia has seen.
“I still think it’s a little too early to tell because we are only at the end of March, but next week will be very important in terms of looking at those trends,” said Tam at her daily update on Sunday.
Canada currently has over 6,200 confirmed cases of COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the coronavirus, and just over 60 Canadians have died from it. Thousands more people are awaiting test results.
The number of confirmed cases has increased rapidly since the beginning of the month as testing ramped up and travellers were called home from abroad.
Provincial and municipal governments began taking steps in earnest to reduce the spread of COVID-19 about two weeks ago — closing schools and businesses, restricting mass gatherings and encouraging people to work from home.
But because of the incubation period of the virus, which can survive in the human body for up to 14 days, measures taken over the course of the past two weeks won’t start showing up in the data tracking the rate of spread until this week, Tam said.
Cautious optimism in B.C., Quebec
On Friday, the B.C. government released a report showing that physical distancing measures had helped to cut the province’s rate of growth in new cases to 12 per cent per day. Without physical distancing measures, the report said that number would be closer to 24 per cent.
B.C.’s chief public health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said