It’s been one year since the World Health Organization officially declared that COVID-19 was a pandemic.
The first case of the virus in Canada was reported at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Hospital on Jan. 25, 2020, after a man who had just returned from China came to the emergency room with a mild case of pneumonia.
The man was treated by Dr. Jerome Leis, an infectious disease physician at Sunnybrook. Leis spoke to CTV’s Your Morning Thursday, to reflect on the first case and what the past year has been like for him and his team.
A year ago, knowing that cases of a new pathogen were spreading in China at the time, Leis and his team had a screening process in place for travellers returning from the region.
“We had a screening protocol in place for returning travellers. Wuhan had been identified two weeks before as an area of concern and they had compatible symptoms. But when I looked at the chest X-ray, the emergency physician at the time … we both immediately knew and then at that point, it was just a matter of managing him and obviously confirming the diagnosis,” said Leis.
The team at Sunnybrook was also able to prevent an outbreak of cases in the hospital, drawing on lessons learned from the SARS outbreak in 2003.
“This first case really set the stage for being able to do so safely and manage these cases safely,” said Leis. “We had a protocol in place and managed the patient in an appropriate precaution and we didn’t see any transmissions to other patients or to healthcare workers. It was truly a team effort.”
Fortunately, the patient was one of the milder cases of COVID-19. But it was a sign relatively mild virus infections may have been far more widespread than originally thought.
“It was one of the first cases recorded in the literature of COVID pneumonia that doesn’t go on to more severe outcomes,” said Leis. “And certainly, I think that was sort of a warning that there were less severe cases out there and we were probably underestimating the global case counts at the time.”
Over the past year Leis says that the greatest challenge in dealing with the pandemic was getting co-ordination between the hospitals, the public health units and the different levels of government.
“I think there’s been some improvements throughout it and hopefully some transformative changes, but I think we still have some ways to go in order to co-ordinate that response across Canada.”
