Health officials in Ontario have confirmed the first presumptive positive case of the new coronavirus in Canada.
Dr. Barbara Yaffe, the province's associate chief medical officer of health, said a man in his 50s who had travelled to Wuhan, China, was taken to Toronto's Sunnybrook Hospital and is now in stable condition in a negative pressure room.
"We were notified of the lab result today, in the middle of the day," Yaffe told a news conference in Toronto on Saturday evening.
"The emergency service was aware of his travel history and used full precautions."
While the case has been confirmed by a test in Toronto, officials said it has yet to complete separate testing by the National Collaborating Centre for Infectious Diseases in Winnipeg. The illness will officially be confirmed once it completes that testing.
The news of Canada's first coronavirus patient comes as authorities around the world grapple with the new type of virus, which originated in China but has since spread to Europe and North America.
Authorities around the world have confirmed more than 1,200 cases so far, including three in France and two in the United States.
RIP ontario . i hope you got your flu shots