Ontario’s provincial COVID-19 database is showing an additional 65 coronavirus cases in Ottawa on Wednesday as the city’s top doctor warns the city may need to raise its virus warning level during the second wave of the pandemic.
Dr. Vera Etches, Ottawa’s medical officer of health, has ramped up the city’s enforcement approach amid a second wave of coronavirus through a new order that subjects residents to hefty fines if they do not respect self-isolation orders should they test positive for the virus, show symptoms, or be in close contact with another individual who has COVID-19.
Asked during city council on Wednesday morning why OPH has not shifted its colour-coded warning system from orange to the more severe red, Etches said the one metric that remains stable in Ottawa is hospitalizations.
Since the majority of people who are testing positive lately are younger, their symptoms tend to be less severe and hospital capacity has yet to be overwhelmed.
But as the local case count continues to climb, the virus could increasingly infiltrate areas of the community such as long-term care homes where more vulnerable residents are put at risk.
“We are close to red,” Etches said.
Staff at the Ottawa Hospital are helping to run operations at two long-term care homes facing coronavirus outbreaks, Laurier Manor and West End Villa, Etches said on Tuesday.
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OPH will release its more fulsome daily report on the local coronavirus, with updates to outbreaks and active cases in Ottawa, later Wednesday afternoon.
The OPH update will sometimes revise case counts posted earlier in the day from the provincial database due to lags in reporting.
The latest daily increase follows 93 new cases of the virus on Tuesday.
