Toronto marks two years since first COVID-19 case detected

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It’s been two years since Toronto announced its first confirmed case of COVID-19 and nothing will ever be the same.

On a Thursday late in January 2020, a 56-year-old man who had recently travelled to Wuhan, China, was taken to Sunnybrook Hospital with a cough. Just days later, on January 25, 2020, this patient was confirmed to be Toronto’s first confirmed case of the novel coronavirus.

Soon his wife would also fall ill with COVID-19, and the couple was Canada’s first and second confirmed cases of the virus.

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It would still be another two weeks before the World Health Organization (WHO) dubbed the virus SARS-CoV-2 and the disease it causes COVID-19.

“We now have a name for the disease: COVID-19. I’ll spell it: C-O-V-I-D hyphen one nine – COVID-19,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom said at a media briefing on February 11, 2020.

Both the man and his wife recovered from the virus and were able to return home in a city that would be in a state of perpetual lockdown for at least the next two years.

Since that first confirmed case, Toronto has confirmed another 271,264 COVID-19 infections, and 3,943 Toronto residents have died from the disease. Masks have been debated, vaccines and treatments have been created, and a revolving door of restrictions has been tried and tested.

In the last 731 days, countless Ontarians have lost parents, grandparents, siblings, friends, and loved ones. Yet, there’s been no time to grieve for those who’ve died, the stories never told, the milestones never met.

It would be nearly two months after that first confirmed case in 2020 before Toronto entered its first lockdown. Two years later, Toronto is in a lockdown with a new name: modified Step 2. While this lockdown has been rebranded, Toronto has spent more time under lockdown than any other city in the country, and possibly the world.

In two years, more than one million Ontarians have been infected. Thousands in the province have died. Accessing tests is more difficult than ever. Several variants have come and gone. There are still no permanent paid sick days. In the end, maybe some things are the same.