Ottawa’s public health unit on Monday reported the death of a second Ottawa resident related to the novel coronavirus.
The death is the city’s first that has been linked to a retirement home, Dr. Vera Etches, Ottawa’s medical officer of health, said during a daily teleconference call with reporters.
There are 130 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the city as of Sunday night, according to Ottawa Public Health, including two outbreaks at the Promenade Retirement Home on Rossignol Drive in Orléans and the Maplewood Retirement Community in the Trainyards area east of downtown, respectively.
The chief medical officer said the retirement home resident who died lived at the Promenade residence in Orléans but she declined to share further identifying information.
The first local death linked to the novel coronavirus was reported March 25.
Etches said there are five confirmed cases in the outbreak at Promenade and the total number of cases in the second outbreak at Maplewood is “pending.”
Outbreak management measures have been implemented at both retirement homes; staff are getting screened and no visitors are allowed, although some exceptions are being made for compassionate reasons, Etches said.
In response to a question from a reporter, Etches said it’s difficult to pinpoint how exactly the virus spread into the retirement residences.
Hospitalizations due to COVID-19 increase
The number of people hospitalized due to COVID-19 in Ottawa has increased to 21 people, Etches said Monday afternoon.
Six of those people are in the intensive care unit (ICU).
Late last week, the city’s top doctor said most of the people in the ICU were in their 50s and 60s. Neither Etches nor an Ottawa Hospital director also on the teleconference call could confirm if that remained the case on Monday.
Etches did report some positive news: 10 cases of the virus have been resolved in Ottawa.
More than 5,000 people have been examined at the city’s COVID-19 assessment centre at Brewer Park so far — 87 per cent of whom were swabbed for testing, according to Andrew Willmore, medical director of emergency management at the Ottawa Hospital.
Public health officials have stressed that they believe the total number of COVID-19 cases in the city is much higher than the number of positive cases reported to date.