How 5 years of COVID-19 has prepared Toronto to face potential crises in the future
CBC
Five years on, Toronto-area doctors and public health officials are looking back at what they've learned since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and most agree the early experience will prove useful if the city faces another infectious disease crisis.
"The biggest thing was fear and uncertainty," Dr. Justin Hall told CBC Toronto. Hall is chief of emergency medicine at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, where Canada's first case of COVID-19 was identified on Jan. 25, 2020.
"Our staff responded extremely well to not knowing what was going to happen and every day looked a little bit different," he said.
March 11 marked the fifth anniversary of the World Health Organization's declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic. In the days that followed that announcement, the provincial government declared a state of emergency, with the City of Toronto following suit soon after.
While most will remember those unprecedented times for lockdowns, mask mandates and vaccine rollouts, Hall said there were many other useful lessons learned about minimizing the spread of disease.
"We were able to have a lot of innovation during this time," he said. "That's one thing that I hope will continue to last and that we won't forget because of the pandemic."
One example of that innovation is the virtual emergency department, which Hall says is still operating and was created through a partnership between Sunnybrook, University Hospital Network and Toronto Unity Health.
According to Sunnybrook's website, the virtual emergency department offers same-day online appointments with emergency department physicians, minimizing the need for people to come to the hospital in person. While its initial purpose was to help address the pandemic, the service also aims to help under-served populations and reduce emergency room wait times.
Dr. Na-Koshie Lamptey, Toronto's acting medical officer of health, told CBC Toronto the city is more prepared to handle an infectious disease crisis now than it was before COVID-19.
"Communication was so key to an effective response," she said. "The coordination and networks that were built up … the way the hospitals, public health, primary care and social services settings really were all sharing information in new ways. I think that is going to help us coordinate better if there should be another challenge."
That "Team Toronto" coordination has already proven useful to help tackle issues of income, food security and transportation, Lamptey said.
She says she's hopeful that those networks are maintained to help better position the city and Toronto Public Health in the event of a potential new pandemic.
"We really felt at the time that we were building the ship as we sailed it," Dr. Samira Mubareka told CBC Toronto of the early days of the pandemic.
Mubareka, an infectious disease specialist and medical microbiologist at Sunnybrook, says now there are "fortunately" less restrictions on those who can study and work with "high consequence coronaviruses."
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