Canada has seen 26,206 confirmed and presumptive COVID-19 cases including 823 deaths due to the virus.

Quebec continues to lead the country in deaths and infections from COVID-19 with many of the victims being elderly.

Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, says outbreaks in long-term care homes are the most crucial COVID-19 problem coming out of the last two weeks of the pandemic.

Tam is urging all Canadians to continue to stay home to keep older people, who are most at risk, from dying.

More than 90 percent of the Canadians who have died are over the age of 60, according to statistics Tam issued last week.

On Monday she said half of the deaths in Canada from COVID-19 had occurred in long-term care homes.

In another news:

Most Canadians want to see significant progress in the fight against COVID-19 before they would feel comfortable with people being allowed to return to work, a new poll suggests.

The poll says 29 per cent of Canadians believe restrictions on workplace and leisure activities should only be lifted once the country is free of any new cases for at least two weeks.

One-quarter of respondents said they would want to see only sporadic cases being discovered before such restrictions are lifted, and assurance there is no pressure on the health system.

Just over 20 per cent think Canadians should continue to physically isolate and stay away from work until there is a vaccine to protect against the virus.

The poll, conducted by Leger and the Association for Canadian Studies between April 9 and 12, surveyed 1,508 adult Canadians and 1,012 adult Americans randomly recruited from its online panel. The internet-based survey cannot be assigned a margin of error because online polls are not considered random samples.

“We wanted to look at that aspect because we’re now in that phase where people are starting to reconsider when are we going back to normal,” said Christian Bourque, executive vice-president of Leger.