Today, Ontario added 15 more COVID-19 deaths to their total, bringing the total number of patients in intensive care to 173.
According to provincial health officials, 977 COVID patients are now receiving treatment in hospitals, down from 1,188 on Saturday but up from 763 a week ago. It should be noted that, due to a lack of reporting from some hospitals, hospitalization figures are often lower on Sundays.
Today, there are 173 COVID-19 patients in intensive care, up from 168 on Saturday and 166 last week.
On Sundays, the province does not release comprehensive hospitalization data.
Another 15 virus-related deaths were added to the Ontario’s death toll, which now stands at 12,563.The province says 11 of those deaths occurred in the past four months and four occurred more than a month ago.
Another 3,481 new infections were confirmed by provincial labs over the past 24 hours but that number is a significant undercount due to testing restrictions.
Only 16,816 tests were processed on Saturday, resulting in a positivity rate of 17.6 per cent, officials said.
Of the new cases confirmed today, 450 involve those who are not fully vaccinated, 801 involve people with two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, 2.051 involve people with three doses, and 179 involve those with an unknown vaccination status.
Earlier this week, Dr. Peter Juni, the scientific director of the province’s Science Advisory Table, said Ontario wastewater data puts the number of new daily infections in Ontario at around 100,000.
The rise in community transmission of COVID-19 in recent weeks has brought about a sixth wave of the pandemic in Ontario, driven by the more transmissible BA.2 Omicron sub-variant. Many experts have called on the province to reinstate mandatory masking in essential public settings in an effort to curb the spread but the Ford government has indicated that it has no intention of reimposing public health restrictions at this time.
A recently released report from Public Health Ontario suggests that the surge in infections in the province is linked to the Ford government’s decision to lift mask mandates in most public settings.
“Close monitoring of epidemiological trends since March 21, 2022 (the date of mask mandates removal) suggests a corresponding temporal association with a subsequent increase in confirmed COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations,” the report published Friday by Public Health Ontario (PHO) read.
Source_ globalnews.ca
