COVID-19 hitting Ottawa's nursing homes hard

Ottawa Public Health (OPH) is sharing more details about the devastating toll COVID-19 is taking on the city's hospitals and long-term care homes.

Additional information shared by OPH Tuesday shows 226 ofOttawa's 899 confirmed cases have been in such institutions. Fourteen long-term care or retirement home residents have died, accounting for the majority of the city's 25 fatalities from COVID-19.

More than half those 226 cases are in just threeinstitutions: Carlingview Manor, Laurier Manor and Madonna Care Community.

Five residents at the Montfort Long-Term Care Centre have died of COVID-19, the most of any of the 18 institutions named by OPH as currently having outbreaks.

None of those deaths was confirmed in the last 24 hours. The city has seen 42 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 since Monday.

Models used by OPH, The Ottawa Hospital and the University of Ottawa suggest that if Ottawans keep their distance from others, hospitalizations due tothe coronavirus could peak by the end of the month. However, if residents ease up on physical distancing, that peak might not come until fall.

Ottawa's top doctor hesitated to say Mondaythat the city was past theworst, though there are some positive signs.

There are now more than 1,575COVID-19 casesin eastern Ontario and western Quebec.

Of the 38people who have died in Leeds, Grenville and Lanark counties, the vast majority were residents of long-term care or retirement homes.

From what we know, nearly 575people out of that regional total have recovered, but some local health units don't share that data.

Confirmed cases represent only a fraction of the actual number because of limited testing, though testing criteria expanded last week.