Canada’s coronavirus curve is flat, worrying trends emerging – top medical officer
FILE PHOTO: Provincial health workers perform coronavirus disease (COVID-19) tests on residents of the remote First Nations community of Gull Bay, Ontario, Canada April 27, 2020. REUTERS/David Jackson
OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada’s coronavirus curve is flat but some worrying trends are emerging, particularly outbreaks in vulnerable indigenous communities, the country’s top medical officer said on Thursday.
The daily death toll in Canada has risen by 10% or more only once in the last 11 days. The total number of people killed by the coronavirus increased by 6% to 3,082 in a day, official data showed on Thursday.
“This week things have been a little flat – the COVID-19 curve is flat, that is … we have to be very cautious going down the other side of the epidemic curve,” chief public health officer Theresa Tam told a briefing.
“Already on this path we have seen some worrisome transmission events emerging,” she said, citing increasing numbers of cases in remote aboriginal communities in several of Canada’s 10 provinces.
Health officials say the virus spreads quickly in environments often where vulnerable people are gathered, such as seniors’ residences, prisons and far-flung parts of the country where healthcare is already patchy.
The figure for those diagnosed with the coronavirus had climbed to 52,056. On Wednesday there were 2,904 deaths and 50,373 positive diagnoses.
Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Alistair Bell
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