COVID-19 Update for November 26 2020 – 4:30pm

Today Dr. David Williams, Dr. Dirk Huyer, and Dr. Adalsteinn Brown discussed Ontario’s updated COVID-19 modelling data.

Ontario is in a “fragile and precarious” state, though COVID-19 case numbers as a key indicator show signs of flattening.

During the update, Dr. Brown shared that key COVID-19 indicators across the province still vary widely by public health unit, but are showing signs of flattening. While there is some optimism over these flattening indicators, it is still too early to know whether Ontario has actually flattened the curve.

This encouraging new data notwithstanding, Ontario can still expect to see a rise in hospital admissions and deaths over the coming weeks, as these are “lagging” indicators that can be weeks behind case counts. It is worth noting that even in a best-case scenario, Ontario will have over 200 ICU beds occupied by COVID-19 patients, which will continue to impact healthcare delivery in Ontario.

A best-case scenario would see cases around 1,200 – 1,300 per day in Ontario during December. A worst-case scenario would see case growth match the levels we saw at the last modeling update, with upwards of 9,000 cases a day in the province by late December.

Dr. Williams is asking Ontarians to continue to adhere to the new public health measures so that we can begin to see a decrease in daily case numbers, allowing the province to move out of this precarious situation.

You can read the full report here.