Ontario set to open first wave of COVID-19 assessment centres
Posted March 12, 2020 12:25 pm.
Last Updated March 12, 2020 4:19 pm.
The Ontario government announced dedicated COVID-19 assessment centres are set to open in the next several days, as number of cases continue to rise across the province.
The government says the first wave of such centres will be facilities at William Osler Health System – Peel Memorial site, The Ottawa Hospital, North York General Hospital, Mackenzie Health, Scarborough Health Network, and Trillium Health Partners.
The centres will be located in separate spaces to protect other patients.
More centres are set to be established across the province in the next few weeks.
Ontario has also approved new physician billing codes for telephone assessments, which will allow doctors to do more evaluations that way rather than having people come into their clinics.
The province is also in the early stages of planning to establish at-home testing.
This comes on the same day 17 new cases of COVID-19 were confirmed in Ontario. One of those cases is a baby boy under the age of one.
As well, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife went into self-isolation after she returned from a speaking engagement in the U.K. and began exhibiting flu-like symptoms, including a low fever late last night.
The province says it has tested more than 4,100 people for the virus so far, and the vast majority of the tests have come back negative.
