Niagara's 40 new cases of COVID-19 have all been traced back to an outbreak at the Pioneer Flower Farm in St.Catharines.
Niagara's Acting Medical Officer of Health says 39 of today's (Wednesday's) cases are employees of the farm, the one other person infected is someone who spent a significant amount of time on the farm but isn't an employee.
Dr. Mustafa Hirji says with 20 cases from Monday's statistics linked to the farm the total number of infected people is 60 and he explains how it happened.
"Someone became exposed to the illness and brought it back to the farm and unfortunately it started to spread there, and I think it's a really good reminder for us that as much as we are talking about a couple days of zero cases and small numbers it doesn't mean that COVID is gone from our community, it's still out there.
Hirji says the case was reported properly and they were able to trace and test everyone impacted.
Niagara now has 706 confirmed cases of the virus.
So far there have been 60 deaths attributed to the virus in Niagara.