Ontario’s measles outbreak through the eyes of front-line workers
Health-care workers battling measles in southern Ontario say they think about the outbreak from the moment they wake until the moment they sleep.
They say treating and tamping down the surge of a disease most have never seen in their lifetime is constant.
Some have even been infected by patients who unwittingly spread the highly infectious illness while seeking help for early but general symptoms — fevers and coughs are common before the telltale rash appears days later.
Measles has spread to more than 3,000 people in Canada this year. More than 2,000 of those infected are in Ontario.
Here’s a look at caregivers on the front lines of an outbreak that has particularly struck a region south and east of London.
“THE UNLUCKY ONES”
Carly Simpson considers herself one of the “unlucky ones.”
Five days after developing a sore throat, body aches and fever, the nurse practitioner gazed at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, stunned to see red splotches all over her body.
“Oh my gosh this is measles,” Simpson gasped.
She said measles never crossed her mind when she first fell ill mid-March, suspecting a more likely cause was her autoimmune disease, ankylosing spondylitis, which leads to chronic pain and inflammation.
After all, the vast majority of cases had been among the unvaccinated and Simpson said she had been inoculated three times — including a booster in 2015 after a test revealed her previous two shots didn’t lend full immunity.
Simpson said she had been assured at the beginning of the outbreak that three shots would be enough to protect her. She still got sick and was essentially bedridden for days, only mustering enough energy to walk to the bathroom. But she said the rash only lasted a day and never spread to her husband or kids.
“I had a mild case because I’ve been vaccinated,” said Simpson, among five per cent of the outbreak’s cases to involve vaccinated people.
She suspected she was infected by a patient who came to her clinic with virus symptoms a couple of weeks earlier.
Early symptoms can seem like other illnesses until the rash appears, leaving health-care workers who examine them vulnerable to exposure.
“Is this just a common cold? Is it just some viral infection?” she said of the questions that dog caregivers.
Shawn Cowley was unlucky, too. He noticed white spots inside his cheeks in late April, and then a red blotchy rash on his forehead that migrated down his face, and onto his shoulders and arms.
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“Fortunately for me, because I was fully vaccinated I didn’t get the full brunt of measles,” he said, explaining that the rash otherwise would have covered his whole body. Still, it took about a week for his body to recover from the exhaustion.
Cowley is a key player in measles containment as head of emergency management and preparedness at the local health unit, Southwestern Public Health. His case was traced to his son’s hockey tournament.
He eventually told his colleagues that he contracted measles but noted there is “a stigma” associated with the illness.
Cowley also felt guilty for going to the grocery store and filling up on gas before he was symptomatic, potentially spreading it to others.
“When you find out you do potentially have measles, and the number of people I’ve exposed, understanding how virulent measles is, that’s a really hard thing to deal with personally because you put other people at risk.”
“SLOW BURN”
Dr. Erica Van Daalen calls the outbreak a “slow burn” but one that has required close collaboration among local hospitals to safely treat and isolate measles patients.
The chief of staff at St. Thomas Elgin General Hospital said she might see one to three patients in the emergency department on an average day, and often they are children.
As of late May, three infected pregnant women had delivered babies and 15 kids had been admitted. Those include young patients transferred from hospitals in Woodstock and Tillsonburg, which don’t have pediatric units.
“It’s a lot of one-on-one bedside nursing,” Van Daalen said in an interview earlier this spring. “When the days are busy, it wears on the nurses.”
Less than seven per cent of Ontario’s cases have ended up in hospital. But the logistics of safely admitting a measles patient is like expert-level Tetris.
Masked patients are ushered through back doors to negative pressure rooms that keep contaminated air from escaping into other areas of the hospital and infecting more people. The room is sealed and has a system that filters and exchanges the air.
Exposure risks are avoided as much as possible, even trips to the bathroom, said Sangavi Thangeswaran, a registered nurse and an infection control practitioner at both Alexandra Hospital Ingersoll and Tillsonburg District Memorial Hospital.
“We ask the patient to stay in there. If they need anything like using the washroom, we try to give them commodes or urinals, just to lessen the exposures,” Thangeswaran said.
There are five negative pressure rooms at Woodstock Hospital. When they’re full, patients are assessed in the ambulance garage, said David Lambie, a charge nurse in Woodstock’s emergency department.
It is an extra layer of logistics to navigate, said Lambie, whose hospital has cared for 108 measles patients since January, 55 of them kids.
Once a patient is well enough for discharge, their negative pressure room is left empty for half-an-hour while contaminated air is expunged. Then it’s deep cleaned for the next patient, said Thangeswaran.
She said each of her Oxford County hospitals initially had just one negative pressure room in each emergency department but as cases swelled they created three more.
As of June 12, her team had cared for 14 measles patients in Ingersoll and 64 in Tillsonburg.
“INHERENT CHALLENGE”
Van Daalen, of the hospital in St. Thomas, said deciding whether to discharge a kid sick with measles sometimes keeps her up at night.
“You hesitate to send them home because you’re not quite sure how they’re going to land,” she said.
“There are some later-term consequences for kids who have measles. It’s a very rare complication, but we’ll have to keep our surveillance up.”
Dr. Ninh Tran said he felt like he was approaching burnout in late February.
Ontario’s weekly case count had nearly doubled to 177 over a two-week period ending Feb. 27, with almost half of the overall cases located in his southwestern public health unit.
Pressure was high to trace cases, halt community spread and stop infections. Measles was on his mind every moment of the day and night.
“You could sense a bit of tension and anxiety in all this discussion,” Tran recalled in late May.
“It’s always like a temporary feeling of doubt, fear, anxiety when we see numbers go up and there’s just a lot of things coming right at you,” Tran said of the outbreak’s early days.
“And then you have to step back and say, ‘OK, it’s not going to be helpful if I get stressed because I need to — and other leaders have to — figure out a way to move forward.”
The spread of measles has ebbed and flowed, but Tran noted a steady decline of new cases mid-June.
“While it’s still early to confirm a persistent pattern, the consistency of the decrease does suggest a potential shift in the trajectory of the outbreak,” said Tran.
“We are cautiously encouraged.”
A new poll by Leger has found that Quebec residents are the happiest in Canada.
The web survey of nearly 40,000 Canadians found that Quebecers rated their happiness at an average of 72.4 out of 100, which is well above the national average.
New Brunswick followed Quebec with an average of 70.2, while Manitoba and Prince Edward Island finished at the bottom of the list.
Mississauga, Ont. had the highest happiness rating of the 10 largest cities, while Toronto was lowest.
Montreal finished second in the category.
The survey found that 49 per cent of respondents said their happiness level was unchanged over the past year, while 23 per said they were happier and 28 per cent said they were less happy.
“These results reveal a population that is both resilient and tested, affected by everyday uncertainty and challenges,” Leger’s executive summary read. “Happiness, while holding its ground overall, shows signs of fragility.”
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The survey found that people in the 18-to-24 and 24-to-34-year-old categories were more likely to report improved feelings of well-being, even if their overall happiness score remained below the national average.
In contrast, people in the 35-to-44 and 45-to-54 age brackets were more likely to report their happiness had deteriorated.
“There is a sense of well-being emerging among younger age groups,” the summary read. “However, this also highlights the importance of supporting adults in mid-life, who are more vulnerable to the pressures of working life.”
Quebec, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador were the three provinces with happiness levels above the national average of 68.7. They were followed, in descending order, by Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario, Manitoba and P.E.I. The territories were not included in the survey.
In the survey of the 10 largest cities, Mississauga and Montreal finished ahead of Hamilton, Calgary, Brampton, Ottawa, Edmonton, Vancouver, Winnipeg and Toronto, in that order.
Women reported slightly higher happiness levels than men, at 69.4 versus 68.0.
Leger says the overall results confirm “a level of happiness that is relatively high but stagnant or even slightly down compared to the pre-pandemic period.”
To get the results, Leger surveyed 39,841 Canadians aged 18 and up between March 31 and April 13.
Online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.
© 2025 The Canadian Press
Ontario Provincial Police are set to host a town hall in Quadeville, Ont., this evening to answer questions from residents about an attack on an eight-year-old child that was initially linked to an animal.
Police have arrested a 17-year-old boy in the case and he faces charges of attempted murder and sexual assault with a weapon.
Members of the small community 170 kilometres west of Ottawa say they were in shock after hearing about the arrest and hope to get clarity at today’s event in the town’s community centre.
Local resident Christine Hudder says she wants to know how police came up with the animal attack theory and why families were told for days to keep their children indoors.
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The victim was found with life-threatening injuries on June 24 after she was reported missing, and remains in hospital.
Police say they are planning to give as much information as possible to locals given that an investigation is still underway.
A Burlington, Ont., mother was unsettled to discover that an old photo of her children had been used in a fraudulent GoFundMe that attempted to elicit donations in connection the recent Texas floods.
Julie Cole told Global News that a friend had contacted her on social media to say that an old photo of her six children was being used in an attempt to collect ill-gotten gains.
“She reached out to me and she was like, ‘Hey, here’s a link to a GoFundMe. Sorry this has happened to you, but obviously a picture of your kids has been used without your consent and it’s being used for a GoFundMe to raise money, to help a family dealing with the Texas floods,’” she said.
Cole explained that the fake GoFundMe, which has since been removed by the company, was looking for donations to support a widowed mother of six kids in connection.
At least 120 people have died while more than 100 others remain unaccounted for as a result of the flooding, including 27 children and councilors from Camp Mystic.
“They were trying to raise $40,000 because of the three daughters had been victims of the Texas floods,” Cole said. “And the way it was presented felt very much like they were part of maybe that girl’s camp.”
Julie Cole told Global News that a friend had contacted her on social media to make that an old photo of her six children was being used in an attempt to collect ill-gotten gains.
Provided
Cole said once the listing was sent to her, she immediately contacted GoFundMe to get the fundraiser taken down.
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By Wednesday morning, the company had done so and in a statement to Global News, GoFundMe said that the fundraiser did not receive any donations and the account has been banned from creating any further fundraisers on the platform.
“GoFundMe has the most robust donor protection processes of any platform of our kind. We have round the clock trust and safety support, humans and technology making sure funds will get to where they are intended,” the statement offered.
After contacting the company, Cole said she shared the incident on her social media pages to raise awareness.
“So I did put it on my Facebook and I put it in my LinkedIn as like a heads-up learning experience kind of thing and there was a lot of outrage,” she said.
Cole also noted that while she is disappointed by the incident, she is well aware that her troubles are miniscule in comparison to those affected by the flooding.
“I do feel a little bit in myself that what I’m feeling is in no way comparable to what the actual families are feeling who have gone through the tragedies of the flooding,” she said.
The photo came from an old blog post she had written 16 years ago. Cole can date the picture as the baby in the photo is now getting ready to go for his driver’s test.
“I’m one of those, like, OG mommy bloggers from 20 years ago. So my kids have been on the internet. They have been sort of in the public eye,” she explained.
“And I know the risk is out there. And I think parents need to remember that, that their kids’ photos can be just screenshotted and used without consent. So there’s one lesson.
“I felt a little, well, very unsettled about it, particularly because of what it was being used for.”
In addition to being a parenting blogger, she also helped found Mabel’s Labels, which offers washable labels for kids clothing and other school items, in an effort to keep them out of the lost and found.
Julie Cole and her six kids in 2025.
Provided
Being a spokesperson for the company while raising six kids keeps her in the parenting sphere and she offered some other advice to parents about the images and social media.
“I think parents just have to be mindful and aware that once it’s out there, you know you’d like to think you’ll get consent or you’ll give consent if somebody asks or they want to use it, but people will just take it and they can just take,” she said.
“You have to be especially careful now with AI, because these photos can be altered.”
She also warned parents to check with their kids as they get older to see if they are OK with pics being posted and that people should be mindful of where they are sharing their donations.
“Another lesson out of this is people need to really be cautious and know where they’re putting their fundraising dollars,” Cole said.
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
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