Massive Sports Outbreak In Ottawa Leads To 89 Confirmed Cases & 445 Exposures

It started with a single asymptomatic player at an indoor hockey practice.
Massive Sports Outbreak In Ottawa Leads To 89 Confirmed Cases & 445 Exposures
Erik Mclean | Unsplash
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Almost 90 people were infected with COVID-19 and nearly 500 high-risk contacts confirmed after a sports outbreak in Ottawa.

Ottawa Public Health created a two-part chart detailing how the infection spread throughout the community since early November.

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The original team practice was attended by a player with COVID-19 who was asymptomatic.*

Masks were not worn at the original practice and people carpooled to the practice, furthering the risk of transmission.

From there, the index case caused four school outbreaks, a daycare outbreak, and ten sports teams with exposures, says Ottawa Public Health.*

"These are real people (parents, students, etc) whose lives were impacted by actions that were avoidable (see the list below)," wrote the public health unit.

"Our. Actions. Matter."

To date, Ottawa has reported 9,208 cases of COVID-19. 

Editor's Note: This article has been updated. 

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  • Abby Neufeld
    Abby Neufeld was a writer at Narcity Canada. She received her Bachelor of Arts in English and Professional Communications at the University of Victoria. Her past work has been published in The Toronto Star, Bitch Media, Canadian Dimension, This Magazine, and more. In 2019, Abby co-founded The New Twenties, an environmentally-focused literary and arts magazine.

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