Last week’s heat caused nearly 40 emergency room visits
And it’s only the beginning of July
According to Toronto Public Health, last week’s record-breaking five-day heat wave was the reason for nearly 40 visits to emergency rooms around the city.
Per the Canadian Press, during Environment Canada’s orange-level heat warning, 39 patients sought emergency care for heat-related ailments, though the health agency explained that the true number of health issues caused or worsened by the heat is difficult to identify, as many respiratory and cardiac symptoms could have been heat-related.
Related: The heat wave didn’t melt this massive pile of snow in North York
The number of emergency room visits is not dissimilar to a three-day heat wave in June 2025, during which 42 people went to emergency rooms in Toronto, citing heat as the cause.
With several months of summer ahead of us, it’s never a bad time to remind everyone of the city’s Heat Relief Network and heat-related illness guidelines.
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
