Concern rising in Ontario while province enters second wave of COVID-19

It’s been nearly 10 months since the news of the coronavirus emerging from Wuhan, China and since spreading to 188 countries, with more than 30 million confirmed cases.

Today, there are more than a million deaths — leaving economies in turmoil.

In Canada , the largest drivers of infection are Ontario and Quebec.

Quebec Premier Francois Legault announced hotspots, including Montreal and Quebec City, are going back into lockdown for the next month to get this back on the rails.

Ontario is taking a different approach.

Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. David Williams now being called “hapless” in a scathing column by Bruce Arthur in the Toronto Star on Tuesday, after calling 700 new cases in the province a wakeup call, as if it wasn’t widely anticipated.

Ontario resisting another lockdown in problem areas, like the GTA and Ottawa, despite calls from the Ontario Medical Association to take action.

Meanwhile, the medical officers of health for Toronto and Ottawa are advising people to cut their social circles down to their immediate households.

Some doctors are warning the province’s latest efforts to flatten the coronavirus curve will fall short, unless more is done to ramp up testing and contact tracing.

The latest public health data shows that in Toronto, the epicentre of Ontario’s second wave, more than half of people tested wait at least two days for the results.

With the province promising to ramp up testing to 50,000 a day from the current 40,000, there is concern wait times for results could get even longer.

An epidemiologist at the University of Toronto tells CBC News it’s likely people who are infected by someone who’s currently being contact-traced, are already infecting a third round of contacts.

The province plans to bring in an extra 1,000 people to help with contact tracing in hopes of curbing the spread.