The latest news on the COVID-19 global pandemic (all times Eastern):
12:55 p.m.
Prince Edward Island is reporting no cases of COVID-19 Wednesday.
Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Heather Morrison, says 26 of the 27 cases on the Island are now considered recovered.
Morrison says there have been 250 complaints about people not following public health orders, resulting in 93 warnings and 16 charges.
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12:45 p.m.
Newfoundland and Labrador is reporting no new cases of COVID-19.
The province has confirmed 259 cases of the illness and 244 people have recovered.
Four people are in the hospital and two are in intensive care.
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11:55 a.m.
Senior Liberal cabinet minister Jean-Yves Duclos says members of the Canadian Armed Forces have now been deployed to 13 long term care facilities, most in and around Montreal.
Duclos, who is the president of the Treasury Board, says altogether about 1,000 members of the Forces will be deployed to assist, and that seven other sites have been identified for possible assistance from the CAF.
He says further information on where they are going will be released by the military and Quebec government.
The military had earlier said 24,000 personnel were being placed on standby to assist in COVID-19 relief efforts.
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11:45 a.m.
The chief public health officer has acknowledged that the number of deaths as a result of COVID-19 in Canada has now exceeded the national projections for potentially 3,883 deaths by May 5.
Just over 4,100 people have died in Canada to date.
Tam says the increased number of deaths is due to the tragic fact that those who were infected weeks ago are now coming to the end stages of COVID-19, and are passing away, most often those in long-term care facilities.
But Dr. Theresa Tam points out that the epidemic still appears to be slowing down and that the doubling time for infections is now at about 20 days.
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11:25 a.m.
Nova Scotia is reporting seven new cases of COVID-19, bringing the total to 998 confirmed cases.
No new deaths were reported today leaving the province’s total at 41.
To date, the province has registered 31,541 negative test results.
Health officials say five people are currently in hospital with two of those patients in intensive care, while 661 people have now recovered.
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11:10 am.
The country’s chief public health officer says to date, over 970,000 people have been tested for COVID-19 in Canada.
Dr. Theresa Tam says about six per cent of those tests were positive.
The number of tests being carried out in Canada are of increased importance as provinces begin to slowly reopen their economies in tandem with increased COVID-19 surveillance.
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10:40 a.m.
Ontario is reporting 412 new cases of COVID-19 and 68 new deaths.
That brings the province to a total of 18,722 cases, including 1,429 deaths and 13,222 resolved cases.
The province had said it would be doing 16,000 tests a day by now, but fewer than 13,000 tests were completed during the previous day, when Premier Doug Ford was blaming half of Ontario’s regional medical officers of health for low testing rates.
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The Canadian Press
