Month: June 2020

Bathurst St. southbound at Glengrove Ave.

A man, 29, has died when his motorcycle collided with a car at Bathurst St. and Glengrove Ave about 6.20 p.m. Monday. He was southbound when a Toyota driven by a woman, 19, entered Bathurst off Glengrove from the west. There is a stop sign. Police are asking local residents, businesses, and drivers, who may have security or dash-camera footage of the area or incident, to contact investigators at 416-808-1900

Cases of infection among migrant workers have gone unreported

The Ministry of Health reports 446 new COVID-19 infections Tuesday as the province continues its difficult slog towards stopping the pandemic. The overnight number is a continuation of the reversal seen over the weekend as new cases began to rise again. The past 24 hours has also seen disheartening news about the failure to control and report infections among migrant farmworkers. As many as 140 cases of infection in laborers housed in communal bunkhouses near Simcoe and St. Catharines were unreported until Sunday. It seems unusually careless. And on Monday it was revealed that hundreds of positive cases in the GTA were not traced for contacts because of incorrect assumptions about who had responsibility for reporting. This is believed to have lead to yet more infections. Huge blunder as GTA virus cases unreported to health units

Fire rips through shops at Queen St. near Sumach/Nathan Barker Twitter

A four-alarm fire has been brought under control on Queen St. East at Sumach St. Tuesday. The blaze occurred in old storefront properties identified as 473 Queen East. There are many videos and photos shown on Twitter including those of Nathan Barker, as shown above.

Scary fire at Queen and Sumach in Toronto today – Steven Mann #Toronto #Fire #TorontoFire pic.twitter.com/9nNJPFqo6f

— blogTO (@blogTO) June 2, 2020

The CBC’s Mike Crawley has broken the news that hundreds of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the GTA were not flagged to public health officials because of a mixup between two hospitals. The blunder may well have contributed to a large spread of the infection. The positive tests were completed as far back as April but the 12 public health units involved were only notified about the oversight in the past few days. The bulk of the cases involve people living in Toronto, Peel Region and York Region. The mistake means thousands of contacts of the confirmed cases were not traced by public health workers, potentially contributing to wider spread of the coronavirus in recent weeks.

I thought that was your job

The tests were conducted by the William Osler Health System, which has hospital sites in Etobicoke and Brampton, as well as a drive-through COVID-19 assessment centre. The test samples were processed by the laboratory at Mount Sinai Hospital in downtown Toronto. Staff at each hospital thought that notifying the public health units about the approximately 700 positive tests was the responsibility of the other hospital, according to a source informed about the mixup. The actual responsibility lay with William Osler, said provincial officials.

This is a huge problem says specialist

CP24 Tuesday quotes infectious disease specialist Dr. Isaac Bogoch as saying the error could be responsible for many new cases of the virus in the GTA. “This is a huge problem,” he said.  “No one would be surprised (if) between April and maybe perhaps a week ago, this is responsible for a lot of the cases in those affected areas.” Bogoch said communication between labs, public health agencies, and patients is “key” to help slow the spread of the virus. “If someone is positive, you’ve got to know that they are positive right away and follow up with the contact tracing of all of those people that were in contact with the positive case,” he said.

An East Gwillimbury woman has told the CBC that she was forced to pay a mortgage termination fee of $30,000 for selling her home after her real state business became a wasteland because of COVID-19  CBC

Dr. Isaac Bogoch

What’s going wrong in suburban Toronto?

The Ministry of Health has seen the number of new COVID-19 cases jump up to 404 Monday prompting virus expert Dr. Isaac Bogoch of the University Health Network to say results like this are not good enough. Dr. Bogoch told CP24 that even the lower range of 300 cases a day seen recently is way too many after two full months of lockdown.

What’s going wrong?

His concern raises the question as to what exactly is going wrong. COVID-19 is insidious but its spread is a function of human behaviour. The government announced last week that testing units would visit workplaces and that “pop-up” mobile testing centres would target hard-hit neighbourhoods. A recently released map of virus incidence in the GTA shows the northeast and northwest areas to be very hard hit. And more than 66 percent of cases of the infection have occurred in the GTA.

Premier says latest spike is foreign workers

An outbreak of COVID-19 in temporary foreign workers is responsible for a sudden jump in cases, Premier Doug Ford says. “One of the reasons they jumped up is 81 migrant workers in southwestern Ontario tested positive,” Ford said. “Overall in the testing, outside of that spike there, it’s looking better.”