We examined COVID-19 records reported in iPHIS between January 22 and February 22, 2020. We excluded those meeting the confirmed, presumptive confirmed or probable provincial case definition. These records included persons meeting the provincial case definition of a PUI at the time of report, persons with whom the local public health unit was following-up and persons for whom testing for COVID-19 had been performed and reported to the local public health unit (n=466). Records without laboratory data in IPHIS were excluded from the analyses, leaving 359 records in our dataset. We evaluated the exposures, characteristics, symptoms and time between symptom onset and testing of these individuals. Exposures were assigned in a hierarchy of travel to China, travel outside of China and exposure in Ontario. All analyses were conducted using SAS Enterprise Guide v.7.1 (SAS Institute Inc., Cary, North Carolina).

The number of individuals with a negative test result peaked in mid-February with 29 individuals reported on February 10, 2020 (Figure 1). Travel to China was reported by the greatest number of patients (n=196, 54.6%) throughout the study period. After February 2, 2020, 32 patients reported travel outside of China.