Dr. Eileen de Villa, Toronto's medical officer of health, has become a household name in the city, keeping residents informed of the latest COVID-19 developments through her daily briefings.

On Thursday, de Villa gave CP24 a tour of Toronto Public Health's downtown office and provided a peek into how her team is fighting the pandemic. She also answered some questions regarding the city's response to COVID-19.

Can you describe Toronto Public Health's COVID-19 response?

De Villa: There are a number of different activities that are part of our COVID-19 response. One of the key ones being case and contact tracing. And this is one of the sites at which we have our staff based to do this very important work as we follow up on COVID-19.

When we identify somebody through a lab test, as somebody who has a COVID-19 infection, one of the key roles of public health is to understand where might they have gotten this infection, and when do we think they started having symptoms. And as a result, who might they had exposed before they figured out that they have an infection.

And the reason why we do that is that if we can identify people who might have been exposed to the person while they were infectious, we can try to contain the spread as close as possible to the source.

It gives us that opportunity to fully investigate all our cases and prevent spread to the next generation of people as early as possible so that those people know that they were exposed. They understand what signs and symptoms they should look for and what they should do should they start to develop those symptoms.

What would be considered a contact?

De Villa: So, when we talk about a disease like COVID-19, it spread through the droplets that come out when you talk and breathe or cough and sneeze. And while they're not visible to us in the world of viruses, these are considered big droplets. They only travel about six feet at most. So that's why we're asking people to physically distance cause we know that even if you are sick, if you don't come within close contact within six feet of somebody, then you can't pick up the disease from them.

How effective are masks against COVID-19?

De Villa: Well, at this stage, we are wearing masks here because, unfortunately, our staff are members of our community, and we know that COVID-19 is spreading in our community. We did have some staff who became ill with COVID-19, and what we're trying to do is make sure that we have all the appropriate measures in place for that 14-day period of time. Just in case any of us were exposed to one of those who are sick in our, in our local community here in our building because it may take up to 14 days from the time you were exposed until you get symptoms. So, we're trying to prevent that next generation of cases.

What is it that scares you about this disease specifically?

De Villa: Anything that is unknown or is new has elements of uncertainty to it. And that always makes it a little more challenging. But, what's important to us is that we're staying focused on making sure we're doing the best we can to reduce the loss of life, to make sure that our healthcare system is here for all those who need it -- whether they have COVID-19 or any other medical condition -- and to try to reduce the impact to mitigate any social or economic impact on our population. I'm focused on making sure that we here at Toronto public health, the whole team is able to do that job as best as possible.

What keeps you up at night?

De Villa: You know, in my job, right as a medical officer of health for the city, I think of all 3 million residents of our city as my patients. And what I can see is that our city is very badly impacted in many, many ways by COVID-19. We have a number of cases.We have a number of people in a hospital, many of whom are in the intensive care unit. And unfortunately, we've had a number of deaths in our city as well. And unfortunately, we're not at the end of this particular pandemic and I would expect that we will see more cases, more hospitalizations, more people in ICU, and ultimately more deaths.

The whole purpose of our response is to try to reduce that loss of life. We're also trying to reduce the negative impact on our healthcare system because we know we've seen what's happened in other jurisdictions -- hospitalizations, intensive care admissions. And healthcare systems around the world have really struggled to meet the demand as a result of COVID-19. So, we're trying to protect our healthcare system.

When we look at all the impacts and what we've had to do to try to limit the spread of this virus, we've tried to change our way of life dramatically in our city. And that has a serious social and economic impact on us as well. We're trying to reduce those or minimize those to the extent that we can.

So, when we see our patients suffering, when we see our patients hospitalized, when we see our patients in ICU, and when we see our patients dying, we can't help but be impacted by that. And so that's what keeps us up at night. But trying to protect our patients is also what keeps us going. We know that we have a job to do on behalf of the people of Toronto. And you know, what keeps us going is that we know we want to serve them well and we want to keep them in good health.

This interview was edited.