COVID-19 Update for November 12 2020 – 4:10pm

Ontario on track to see up to 7,000 COVID cases a day by end of year.

Ontario’s top doctors are predicting a sharp spike in COVID-19 cases for the province by the end of the year.

After the last modelling update in October, the province expressed optimism in the level of growing COVID cases in Ontario, but health officials at the time stressed the estimates could quickly change.

And they have.

During a modelling update released this afternoon, Dr. Williams, Dr. Yaffe, Dr, Huyer and Dr. Brown provided a starker update that suggests Ontario could see between 6,000 and 7,000 cases a day in the coming weeks — even if the province were to enact a lockdown.

This projection is based on a five per cent increase in case growth, which Dr. Brown refers to as a realistic, if not optimistic, estimate. This increase will see Ontario’s cases outpace those of France, the UK and Germany, which are all currently in some form of lockdown.

Key pandemic indicators, while varying from region to region, are all worsening across the province. At this point, growth in cases and percentage of positives across the province are growing substantially, while contact tracing is starting to be overwhelmed.

The update today stressed that we will see more than 150 ICU beds occupied by COVID-19 patients within the coming weeks, and this will begin to have an impact on our health-care delivery. In the last three weeks we have seen a 61 per cent increase in total hospital beds being used for COVID-19. While this number is low compared to the overall number of hospital beds in the province, health officials stressed that our health system is already running near capacity on a good day. This means that once Ontario hits 150 beds, elective surgeries and procedures will begin to get bumped.