Talk:COVID-19 pandemic in Toronto

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 14 January 2021 and 24 April 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Azmatc. Peer reviewers: Kachina123.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 18:29, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Active Case Numbers
I redid the numbers according to the spreadsheet laid out on the Toronto website, but the numbers still seem inaccurate... how could there be more daily new cases than active cases? Someone help me solve this riddle. CaffeinAddict (talk) 03:00, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
 * That is bizarre. It would be best to ask an expert. Johnny Au  (talk/contributions) 00:24, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
 * It is very confusing for me too. The data in the Excel sheet available at https://www.toronto.ca/home/covid-19/covid-19-latest-city-of-toronto-news/covid-19-status-of-cases-in-toronto/ keeps changing.
 * > Please note that the data shown here may differ from other sources, as data are extracted at different times. The data in the charts are subject to change as the public health investigation into reported cases is currently ongoing. Additionally, data definitions are subject to change as the pandemic evolves.
 * > Episode date is the earliest of symptom onset, laboratory testing, and reporting dates. In the figures above, cases are shown based on when the person’s symptoms started, or if that is not known, the date that they were tested. If the test date is not known, the date that the case was reported to public health is used. As the case is investigated and new information on these dates is determined, the dates in the graph will be updated.
 * Numbers going back to April 16 changed in the excel sheet from today. So bizarre. // sikander { talk } 🦖 21:51, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

I think the active cases chart is inaccurate based on the daily numbers I’ve been editing. I know it comes straight from Public Health but they seem fudged. Perhaps it should just be removed. CaffeinAddict (talk) 21:10, 12 June 2020 (UTC)
 * A note might have to be added. Johnny Au  (talk/contributions) 00:55, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

That sounds like a fair compromise. CaffeinAddict (talk) 04:28, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Agreed. The note has to be visible to readers. Johnny Au  (talk/contributions) 00:11, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

The daily active case numbers at https://www.toronto.ca/home/covid-19/covid-19-latest-city-of-toronto-news/covid-19-status-of-cases-in-toronto/ are only counting cases that existed on that date that are still currently active, not the number of active cases on that date. This is not made clear on their website, nor is it made clear in this article. Cebw (talk) 19:59, 15 June 2020 (UTC)


 * OK, that makes sense and at the same time doesn't make sense as to why the city would provide data like that. I'll remove the Active Cases section for now as it is misleading with this data. // sikander { talk } 🦖 21:25, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Perhaps, if you wanted to put it back in, you could use the data from edits to the article using the previous active case numbers with a shorter timeline. Just a thought. CaffeinAddict (talk) 05:07, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm now using numbers from the News Releases & Media Advisories page and have populated June 2020. I'm tracking this in a Google spreadsheet and this data makes a whole lot more sense to me than the Excel sheet from on the COVID-19 dashboard. Will also add May for a nicer and more useful chart. // sikander { talk } 🦖 23:19, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Now this all makes sense. What’re we to do? CaffeinAddict (talk) 20:03, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Link Rot Header
I've used multiple reflink platforms to try to format everything but I'm still having some issues with a few citations. Anyone want to try to take a crack at them? CaffeinAddict (talk) 03:21, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
 * ✅ Johnny Au  (talk/contributions) 14:01, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Confirmed cases vs. Probable cases
All the numbers from https://www.toronto.ca/home/covid-19/covid-19-latest-city-of-toronto-news/covid-19-status-of-cases-in-toronto/ are "Confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 reported to Toronto Public Health". In this article the case numbers are labelled as "Confirmed cases" and pretty much all other Wikipedia articles only count confirmed cases. Should all the numbers on the page be changed to the confirmed numbers that can be gotten from the provincial government, or should the "Confirmed cases" be relabelled as "Confirmed and Probable cases" in this article? Cebw (talk) 21:33, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I think changing the label would be much easier. Is there a provincial source for Toronto numbers? // sikander { talk } 🦖 23:06, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
 * The daily epidemiologic summaries from Ontario have the Toronto cases each day, but I'm not sure if recoveries and deaths can be found anywhere. Here is the summary from Jun 19: https://files.ontario.ca/moh-covid-19-report-en-2020-06-19.pdf. So far, probable cases have made up 8.82% of total cases in Toronto so the label of "Confirmed cases" doesn't feel right. Cebw (talk) 12:33, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

We could simply just label it “cases”. CaffeinAddict (talk) 00:49, 20 June 2020 (UTC)
 * You know what at further glance, Toronto Public Health is so big, who cares what the semantics are. Unless there's a second wave, this is penny-pinching at this point. The cases on on the decline. Leave it as "Confirmed Cases". I trust the 4th largest city in North America to treat presumed cases as they are. This is only a day by day basis. They have their own testing capacities. Toronto can say how many cases they have and I trust them. CaffeinAddict (talk) 07:02, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Daily numbers are still confusing
For June 23rd, the number of deaths in the "Cummulative Cases by Episode Date" and "Cummulative Cases by Reported date" in this Excel sheet on Google Drive maintained by the City is 1070. The "by Episode date" tab says 1070 since June 18th, and "by Reported date" tab says 1070 from June 23rd. At the same time the number of deaths in this tweet by Toronto Public Health on June 23rd is 1,061. I don't understand why this discrepancy exists. Any ideas? // sikander { talk } 🦖 19:20, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
 * An incompetent public service in Ontario? Unheard of! Hahahahaha. CaffeinAddict (talk) 04:50, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Public Health Numbers
Just a heads up, and you may have noticed, starting this week Toronto Public Health is only updating the numbers on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. CaffeinAddict (talk) 19:08, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
 * As of July 15, Toronto Public Health has been posting daily updates on twitter so these numbers should be included Cebw (talk) 22:04, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the heads-up. Johnny Au  (talk/contributions) 00:33, 13 October 2020 (UTC)