What began as one person with COVID-19 practising with their sports team has become a cautionary tale from Ottawa Public Health (OPH) on the rapid transmission of the novel coronavirus.
OPH tweeted another graphic showing real-life community transmission of the virus on Monday, as it has done in the past, to show how COVID-19 spread at local events such as a wedding or outdoor barbecue.
This time, the local public health unit showed what happened when one person with COVID-19 attended a sports practice.
Of the 31 people on that initial team, 10 ended up testing positive for the virus, with the rest considered high-risk contacts.
Those infected individuals then went back to their daily lives, bringing the virus into their homes and exposing the rest of their households. One person who tested positive in one of those households then went to a daycare setting, where 11 more people were exposed and an outbreak was subsequently declared.
One person on the original team who tested positive also then went to dine indoors with eight people outside their household bubble, OPH’s graphic shows, putting those individuals at high risk of infection as well.
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Infections also overlapped onto other sports teams. One of the infected individuals from the original team went to practice with an even larger team, leading 17 people in that cohort to test positive and creating 24 more high-risk contacts.
The chain of transmission only worsened from there, exposing more households, sports teams and schools.
In total, after 18 days, seven coronavirus outbreaks were linked to the original case.
OPH said the number of people testing positive for the virus in connection to the first case stood at 60 as of Oct. 20, though that number could continue to grow.
More than 170 high-risk contacts were borne out of the initial outbreak, all of whom needed to self-isolate.
Dr. Vera Etches, Ottawa’s medical officer of health, first flagged that community spread on local sports teams had become an issue on Oct. 21, when she said OPH would start tracking outbreaks in organized sports on its COVID-19 dashboard.
She encouraged residents then to avoid carpooling to practices and to keep physical distance and wear masks while socializing with teammates.
Ottawa has so far seen seven outbreaks connected with organized sports teams, all of which are now considered closed.
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