Canada's first confirmed case, right here

COVID-19 in Toronto

Canada's pandemic began in Toronto, when a man returning from Wuhan was confirmed as the country's first case in January 2020. The city's state of emergency lasted 777 days.

The Toronto skyline — Toronto skyline — Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0

Toronto is where Canada's pandemic story began. This is a timeline of how it unfolded in the city itself, distinct from our 2003 SARS outbreak page covering the city's earlier infectious-disease crisis.

The first case

A man in his 50s returned to Toronto from Wuhan, China on January 22, 2020, began feeling ill, and sought care at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. On January 25, 2020, Ontario's Chief Medical Officer of Health announced this as Canada's first presumptive case of the novel coronavirus — making Toronto the origin point of the country's outbreak, weeks before the disease was formally named COVID-19.

Escalation and lockdowns

The World Health Organization declared a global pandemic on March 11, 2020; Ontario declared a provincial state of emergency on March 17; and the City of Toronto declared its own local state of emergency on March 23, 2020, as Toronto Public Health reported 239 confirmed cases citywide. Schools, non-essential businesses and public gathering spaces closed through spring 2020. As case counts rose again, Toronto was placed under a provincial lockdown designation in late November 2020, and again during subsequent waves in early and spring 2021.

Toll and reopening

Toronto's state of emergency remained formally in effect for 777 days, finally lifted in May 2022. Mass vaccination clinics opened across the city through 2021, including at converted community and sports facilities, in what remains the largest public-health mobilization in the city's modern history.

Sources

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