Medical personnel from Newfoundland and Labrador arrive in Toronto

Healthcare professionals from Newfoundland and Labrador have arrived in Toronto to help out Ontario’s hardest hit hospitals.

The province said Monday that it made a formal request to the federal government for assistance from the military and the Canadian Red Cross.

In response, the federal government said the Canadian Armed Forces would deploy up to three multi-purpose medical assistance teams (MMATs) of nurses and medical technicians to help Ontario’s overburdened health-care system, much as it did during the pandemic’s first wave.

The team from Newfoundland and Labrador is the first to arrive in Ontario.

“It’s a small team, but small teams can have big impacts,” said Newfoundland and Labrador premier Andrew Furey. “This is an example of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians stepping up to answer the call and I think we should all be, collectively as a province, proud of these individuals and their families for making this sacrifice to help the Canadian collective effort.”

Earlier Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted photos of the healthcare heroes leaving home.

Wheels up for Toronto. Health care workers from Newfoundland and Labrador are now en route to Ontario, where they’re set to help those on the front lines. To everyone who has stepped up, including the @RCAF_ARC personnel who are making sure these workers arrive safely: thank you. pic.twitter.com/Zakzm9oJ1T

— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) April 27, 2021

The assistance arrives soon after Ontario reported its highest positivity rate of 10.9 per cent on Monday.

According to the latest provincial data, 875 people out of 2,336 hospitalized were currently in intensive care, and 589 of those patients have been on a ventilator.

Virus variants continue to drive the third wave of the pandemic and the total provincial cases of a variant of concern has grown to 57,993 — a majority of the cases being the B.1.1.7 variant originally confirmed in the U.K.