Thread by @Aaron_Derfel

1) Montreal appeared to be edging closer to being coded an orange zone in the #pandemic Thursday after authorities added a backlog of more than 200 #COVID19 cases to the daily tally. In this thread, I will try to explain what is now going on in the city at this critical juncture.

2) The Montreal public health department revealed the huge backlog at a news conference, the same day Herzliah High School became the first educational institution in the #pandemic in Quebec to close for two weeks because of a #COVID19 outbreak. montrealgazette.com/news/local-new…

3) Think of that for a moment. A high school closes temporarily only three weeks into the start of the school year in a city with at least six other #COVID19 school outbreaks. Provincially, 173 classes have been shuttered because students or staff tested positive for the virus.

4) If one discounts the backlog added from previous days, Montreal posted 73 new #COVID19 cases Thursday. The city’s rolling seven-day average is now 47.04 cases per million residents. One of the government's criteria to declare an orange zone is at least 60 cases per million.

5) In a sign of the swift-moving and chaotic nature of the #pandemic, the government produced numerous discrepancies in its reporting of #COVID19 data on Thursday. In fact, the blue line in the chart above does not add up, nor do some of the government’s own graphs.

6) On Thursday, Education Minister Jean-François Roberge disclosed for the first time details of what he would do to schools in the event a given region codes orange or red. The government is not relying solely on case incidence over seven days to declare a region orange.

7) But if the government did rely only on case incidence — as some jurisdictions around the world do — Quebec City and Bas-Saint-Laurent would already be declared orange zones. Under Quebec's new guidelines, that means students could no longer engage in extracurricular sports.

8) At the neighborhood level, the chart below shows that every health district in the city is reporting #COVID19 cases in the double digits. Côte-des-Neiges (where Herzliah is located), downtown and Parc-Extension reported a staggering 57 cases, likely many from previous days.

9) Premier François Legault asserted on Thursday that the number of #COVID19 hospitalizations corresponds with the optimistic projections by the Institut national de santé publique in June. What are the facts? Quebec has averaged 3.5 new hospitalizations a day since Sept. 4.

10) Please review the projections chart below by the INSPQ. It shows a median of just below 2.5 new hospitalizations a day in September under the optimistic scenario. In total, the province has witnessed a net increase of 42 hospitalizations since Sept. 4.

11) Consider also the capacity of Quebec’s health-care system, with 1,700 nurses quitting the profession during the #pandemic, according to the FIQ union. Consider the backlog of 92,000 surgeries. And consider the fact that ER overcrowding is once again a daily reality.

12) Yet the government’s response to the worsening situation is to launch an ad campaign and impose heftier fines on those who flout public-health guidelines. Why not follow the lead of other provinces like Ontario and British Columbia in setting new restrictions? End of thread.