Premier François Legault reported 691 new cases of COVID-19 in Quebec, making it the first province to surpass 10,000 cases.
To go along with the dire milestone, Legault announced 25 more deaths. The recent updates bring Quebec’s cases count to 10,031, which includes 175 deaths. There are also 827 people who have recovered from the virus, but 632 Quebecers in hospital, including 181 in intensive care.
Of the province’s over 10,000 cases of COVID-19, there are 4,775 in Montreal. The Montérégie region is the only area that also has more than a thousand cases, but there are five others with at least 400.
Quebec first experienced a consistently large daily surge in cases at the end of March, due in part to a change in process — cases that tested positive by hospital laboratories were now considered confirmed and no longer needed to be validated by the Quebec Public Health Laboratory.
Health officials also believe that Quebec is seeing a surge in cases before everyone else because they also had their March break before the rest of country. When kids had time off between March 2-6 in Quebec, there weren’t nearly as many measures in place to contain the spread as there were when the rest of the provinces had their spring break from March 16-20.
As of April 8, health officials in Quebec have administered 99,239 tests that have turned out negative.
