Ontario has 27 people being tested for Wuhan coronavirus, but most remain in their own homes and there is no evidence of person-to-person transmission here, provincial health officials say as the number of confirmed cases remains steady at two.
All the people under investigation who have sought medical attention for symptoms such as cough and fever are “flight related” in regard to trips from China, Dr. David Williams, chief medical officer of health, told a news conference Thursday.
The 27 people awaiting results of nose and throat swabs for the virus are in various locations across the province and “most are not” in hospital, said Dr. Barbara Yaffe, Ontario’s associate medical officer of health. She would not reveal any locations.
None of them are listed as being presumed to have the virus because of contact with others, such as other family members, who are confirmed cases.
A “small number” of the 27 are from the same Jan. 22 China Southern Airlines flight CZ311 from Guangzhou that brought the two confirmed cases to Toronto, Yaffe added.
They are a husband and wife who went straight home from the airport in a private vehicle. The man, in his 50s, went to Sunnybrook Hospital in an ambulance the following day and remains there in stable condition. The wife did not go to hospital and is “feeling well” at home in self-isolation, Yaffe said.
Some people have a better ability to “throw off” the virus than others, Williams told reporters, adding it’s not yet clear when the virus will have expired in the husband, making it OK for him to be discharged from hospital and return home.
All passengers within two to three metres of the couple on the China Southern flight have now been contacted by Toronto Public Health or public health departments in areas where they live and are being checked on by telephone daily for the duration of a 14-day incubation period for this variant of coronavirus.
To date, 38 people in Ontario with recent travel histories to China and who have been tested for the new coronavirus have been cleared, but may have other bugs like the common flu.
People who have returned from China and are experiencing coughs or fevers have been reaching out to health-care providers to be checked, which shows the system is working, health officials said.
