Dr. Njoo, Canada’s deputy chief public health officer, released updated federal modelling of the COVID-19 epidemic today, saying the outbreak is “largely under control.”
While the COVID-19 epidemic in Canada remains “largely under control,” one of Canada’s top public health officials is warning that the potential for a significant spike in new cases “is not just hypothetical, as this is exactly what we are already seeing in some other parts of the world.”
As the United States nears three million cases of COVID-19 and states like Texas and California show record-high numbers of newly-reported cases, Canada’s public health agency on Wednesday released the latest figures in its modelling of the coronavirus outbreak in this country, showing the epidemic is on the same trajectory as it was at the end of June.
Dr. Howard Njoo, deputy chief public health officer of Canada, told a media briefing in Ottawa today that “the current patterns of COVID-19 infections show limited to no transmission in most areas of the country.”
Dr. Njoo pointed out that most of the recent outbreaks have been localized, citing northern Saskatchewan and Ontario’s Peel and Windsor-Essex regions as hotspots that emerged over the last two weeks.
These outbreaks have led to Canada’s Rt number — representing the average number of people infected by each individual case — rising above 1 after staying below 1 for most of the last 10 weeks. An Rt above