Ontario’s premier says he does not want to cause panic by releasing the province’s COVID-19 models.

Doug Ford said Wednesday, “There is very little separating what we will face here in Ontario from the devastation we’ve seen in Italy and Spain. Thousands of lives are at stake.”

But when pushed by reporters to give a projection of the number of lives in Ontario which could be lost by COVID-19, he would only say, “If you do have COVID-19, self-isolate for two weeks, and the people around you have to self-isolate as well. You can’t have a loved one in the house and you have COVID-19 and the loved one goes out. That can’t happen. That will just increase the spread.”

There have been more than 13,000 deaths linked to COVID-19 in Italy and more than 9000 in Spain.

In recent days, U.S. public health experts have said there could be between 100,000 and 240,000 deaths in that country as a result of COVID-19.

As of 4am Thursday, there are 2392 confirmed cases of the new coronavirus in Ontario, including 37 related deaths.

But collectively, the province’s local public health units are reporting double the number of deaths than the province’s total.

Ontario’s Associate Chief Medical Officer of Health acknowledged the ministry is working with out of date information.