Members of the City of Windsor's senior management team want to assure residents public services are stable, but Mayor Drew Dilkens is begging people to follow the provincial order and stay at home.
The province's modelling suggests case counts are on a verticle projectory. Windsor-Essex leads the province when it comes to cases per 100,000 residents and positivity rates.
"There's no way to say it. It was just plain horrible," said Dilkens.
As of Thursday, there were 111 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in local hospitals. However, doctors suspect another 196 people who were admitted have it too. The results on their swabs just have not come back yet.
"Not enough of our neighbours and our friends are doing their part to flatten the curve," Dilkens said.
Windsor Fire and Rescue Services Chief Stephen Laforet said three new COVID Response Stabilization Teams are helping shore up staffing strains across the healthcare system. The teams, comprised of Registered Nurses, Registered Practical Nurses, and Nurse Practitioners, provide an extra pair of hands where needed.
"They will be tasked to a critical area either to do swabbing for COVID or to provide a field health assessment," explained Laforet. "We've been at a number of locations where they've conducted field health assessments, and the person that they're providing the assessment to is immediately directed to the ER."
The stay at home order also gives police officers, provincial offences officers, and bylaw enforcement officers greater power to shut down public gatherings that exceed limits.
For much of the pandemic, enforcement has largely focused on public education, but Dilkens told reporters he's being told police are moving beyond that and are ready to issue fines, especially to repeat offenders.
The hope is a combined effort from the city, emergency services, the healthcare system, and the public will change the projectory of daily case counts and relieve pressure on hospitals. If it does not, Dilkens believes doctors may be forced to make the kind of hard decisions their colleagues have made in other jurisdictions.
"You could be at a point where the hospital may or may not be able to accept patients," he said. "If you had two competing patients who needed treatment -- an 18 or 20-year-old who is asthmatic versus a 55-year-old who is diabetic -- who do you choose?"