The federal government released information Thursday on federal projections for the path of the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada.

Right now, 94% of COVID-19 cases are in four provinces including Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta. 98% of the deaths in Canada are also in those four provinces. More than half of the cases in the country, at 19,774 nationally, are occurring in Quebec alone. There have been 461 deaths across Canada and at least 198 are among residents of long term care homes.

Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam says the path of the epidemic is very sensitive to actions taken and the country stands a really good chance of absolutely staying in the green zone if Canadians and public health officials continue to do everything that is being done right now.

In the short term, by April 16th, Canada’s public health officials are predicting between 22,580 to 31,850 cases of COVID-19 in the country and that could result in 500 to 700 deaths in the same time frame.

She notes that Canada is in the early stages of the epidemic which is an opportunity to control it and prepare the health care system. Public health officials stress that will mean keeping up physical distancing, increase testing, self isolate cases and rapidly trace contacts.

And to emphasize the difference these efforts can make the federal government says prior to stronger public health measures each infected person in Canada infected, on average, 2.19 people. Today less than 2 people are being infected with COVID-19 and the goal is that each person infects fewer than one person on average so the epidemic dies out.