Ottawa marks 5 years since 1st COVID-19 case, start of pandemic

The first confirmed COVID-19 case in the Ottawa region was announced five years ago on Tuesday, the same day the World Health Organization (WHO) announced a global pandemic.

Since then, about 1,300 Ottawa residents with COVID have died, while more than 3.5 million COVID vaccine doses have been administered in Ottawa, according to data from Ottawa Public Health. 

Experts who spoke to CBC about lessons learned say the pandemic highlighted the ongoing importance of funding public health, and illustrated how in the digital era misinformation can spread just as quickly as an airborne virus — and prove equally dangerous. 

"In the age of the internet and social media, information travels exceedingly fast," said Ian Culbert, executive director of the Canadian Public Health Association. "And so public health has to be able to be ahead of the information curve to get the best information out there."

1st case declared March 11, 2020

The first official case of COVID-19 in Ottawa was identified on March 11, 2020, in a 41-year-old man who had recently travelled to Austria. He was not exhibiting signs of the illness before his flight home but developed symptoms after returning to Ottawa. 

The man took a COVID-19 test at the General campus of The Ottawa Hospital, days before Ottawa Public Health (OPH) began opening dedicated testing sites in the city. After receiving a positive result the man was placed in isolation at home, where his symptoms remained mild. 

But he was most likely not the first person infected with COVID-19 in Ottawa, public health officials later concluded. By November 2020, OPH believed that dozens of Ottawa-area residents had contracted the illness by March 11.

That same month, Ottawa declared a state of emergency due to COVID-19 and the city recorded its first death linked to the virus. Months of lockdowns and closures followed as public health officials struggled to contain waves of the virus. 

The first vaccine in Ottawa was administered at The Ottawa Hospital to a personal support worker on Dec. 15, 2020. Mask mandates and travel restrictions continued until October 2022.

In May 2023, the WHO declared that while the pandemic itself was not over, the associated global health emergency was.

Public health officials now manage COVID-19 as an endemic disease with periodic surges, though its impacts have grown less severe due to population immunity from vaccines and previous infections.  

'Systems run on money'

With COVID-19 falling out of the headlines, there has been a clawback in public health funding, putting hard-won institutional knowledge at risk, according to Culbert.

"At the end of the day, these systems run on money," he said.

"We haven't fixed their data collection and sharing systems. We don't have good disaggregated data, so we can't really dive into which populations are at greatest risk or aren't taking advantage of vaccines or other programs that are being put in place. So there's a lot we still need to be doing."

Canada has also not done enough to engage Canadians who are distrustful of the public health system, he said. "We haven't done enough to engage those populations and give them a reason to trust us."

And that's a problem as diseases like measles and polio, which were nearly eradicated by global vaccination programs in the 20th century, make a resurgence in places like the United States and Gaza. 

With less regular exposure to these diseases, there is a risk of people forgetting about their seriousness, Culbert warned.

"Most young parents today have never seen measles… so they're not as concerned about it. And so they're not as vigilant," he said.

Danger of airborne diseases

From a scientific perspective, COVID-19 highlighted the dangers posed by airborne diseases, according to cardiologist and epidemiologist Christopher Labos.

"If there was one scientific discovery to have been made during the pandemic, it was about the importance of indoor air transmission of viruses and the importance of indoor air quality towards our health," he told CBC. 

Until COVID-19, most public health measures focused on containing transmissible diseases focused on person–to-person spread, Labos explained, "which is why for so much of the pandemic we were talking about wiping down surfaces and disinfecting things."

The pandemic has forced a reckoning with the public health impact of buildings with poor ventilation, Labos added. 

"We need to start upgrading our HVAC systems so that we can filter the air and improve indoor air quality. Otherwise, we are going to keep getting sick with not just COVID, but also influenza, RSV [Respiratory syncytial virus] and all the other respiratory viruses that circulate every winter."