{"id":14186,"date":"2020-05-09T14:11:08","date_gmt":"2020-05-09T18:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/?p=14186"},"modified":"2020-05-18T01:00:17","modified_gmt":"2020-05-18T05:00:17","slug":"24-hours-zero-new-local-covid-19-cases-what-does-this-milestone-mean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/24-hours-zero-new-local-covid-19-cases-what-does-this-milestone-mean\/","title":{"rendered":"24 hours, zero new local COVID-19 cases. What does this milestone mean?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Author of the article:<\/p>\n

Megan Stacey<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Publishing date:<\/p>\n

4\u00a0hours ago<\/span> \u00a0\u2022\u00a0 3 minute read<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Nine vehicles were lined up at the 11:00 a.m. opening of the COVID-19 assessment centre at the Carling Heights Optimist Community Centre in London on Friday April 24, 2020. Derek Ruttan\/The London Free Press\/Postmedia Network<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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The virus is far from whipped, but the London area is marking an encouraging milestone, the first day in seven weeks with no deaths and no new cases of COVID-19.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s good news, but a day of \u201czeroes\u201d doesn\u2019t signify the end of the pandemic, experts say.<\/p>\n

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24 hours, zero new local COVID-19 cases. What does this milestone mean?<\/span> Back to video<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/header>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cObviously there has been a declining trend. This is very good news but we need to be cautious in terms of saying the virus is not any longer in our community. That would be a hard statement to make at this stage,\u201d said Dr. Saverio Stranges, the chair of epidemiology and biostatistics at Western University\u2019s Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is excellent news, but I will encourage (everyone) to wait for a few additional days to see whether this a consistent trend or maybe just a random fact as far as today.\u201d<\/p>\n

London\u2019s double-goose-eggs \u2013 0 deaths, 0 new cases as of Friday at 10 p.m. \u2013 comes as Ontario announces 346 new confirmed COVID-19 diagnoses, the lowest 24-hour increase in more than a month, despite a record 19,000 tests. Another 59 people in Ontario have died from the virus in that one-day period.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Premier Doug Ford also announced on Saturday that provincial parks and conservation authorities would open for day-use starting Monday.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the first day since March 21 \u2013 seven weeks exactly \u2013 that tests haven\u2019t revealed any new COVID-19 infections in London or Middlesex County in a full day. London had had 12 total cases of the coronavirus at that point. (It has had 438 as of right now.)<\/p>\n

A Western student who had returned from Wuhan, China, the epicentre of the virus, fell ill with COVID-19 in late January and was London\u2019s first case.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a day that we\u2019ve been waiting for for some time. I didn\u2019t think we would get the two zeroes in the same day,\u201d Dr. Chris Mackie, the region\u2019s top public health official, said on Saturday.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s very clear that we\u2019re not through this. We will have more cases that are reported in the next weeks, but it\u2019s a very good sign that things are starting to normalize,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

There have been a total of 438 confirmed COVID-19 cases in London and Middlesex County, and 43 people have died. Retirement and long-term care homes make up 136 of the 146 COVID-19 infections that are still active.<\/p>\n

As of late Friday, there were a total of 10 people in hospital in London with the virus, and four of them were in intensive care.<\/p>\n

Mackie and Stranges said the role Londoners have played in flattening the curve by staying home, keeping apart from other people, and practicing good hygiene is crucial.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI\u2019m encouraged by what I see in our communities. It\u2019s Saturday, I just did my grocery run, and people are being very careful,\u201d Mackie said, citing lots of face masks, \u201ccourteous interactions\u201d and shoppers giving one another lots of personal space.<\/p>\n

Mackie pointed to countries with more relaxed public health measures that have been met with higher death tolls and case counts.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not hard to figure out what would have happened if we as a whole community and society had not put in these efforts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m still seeing \u2013 at least from my perspective \u2013 that people continue to take this seriously, and that\u2019s what will need to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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There\u2019s \u201cno reason\u201d to think there won\u2019t be a second wave of COVID-19 in the late fall or early winter, Mackie said, noting the virus is seasonal, like the flu.<\/p>\n

New skills, such as learning how to be physically distanced from others while out and about, or embracing curbside pickup for shopping, will continue to be important, he added.<\/p>\n

Western\u2019s Saverio, a native Italian who also has family in the United States, said the relatively consistent response from politicians and public health officials has helped Canada flatten the curve and avoid some of the devastation of COVID-19, compared to his home country and others hit hard.<\/p>\n

\u201cCanada has been hit by the epidemic a bit later than western European countries. Definitely Canada has been much more reactive,\u201d he said, urging people to keep up the same tactics in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to buy time and keep up our Canadian approach. We have been extremely cautious, extremely serious in putting health and safety first \u2013 I really appreciate that.\u201d<\/p>\n

mstacey@postmedia.com<\/p>\n

twitter.com\/MeganatLFPress<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Author of the article:Megan StaceyPublishing date:4\u00a0hours ago \u00a0\u2022\u00a0 3 minute readNine vehicles were lined up at the 11:00 a.m. opening of the COVID-19 assessment centre at the Carling Heights Optimist Community Centre in London on Friday April 24, 2020. Derek Ruttan\/The London Free Press\/Postmedia NetworkArticle contentThe virus is far from whipped, but the London area…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14187,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[120,162,161,157],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14186"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14186"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15438,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14186\/revisions\/15438"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}