Ontario reported at least 3 new deaths due to COVID-19 in a 48-hour span, saying the number of COVID patients requiring ventilators to breathe in hospitals hit a multi-year low.
The Health Ministry said it detected two new COVID-19 deaths on Sunday and one more on Monday.
There have been 92 deaths reported in the last seven days and 436 in the last 30 days.
There have been 13,164 reported COVID-19 deaths in Ontario since March 2020.
But hospitalizations continue to decline significantly, especially among patients who require the most critical types of care.
Dr. Alon Vaisman, an infectious disease specialist at Joseph Brant Hospital in Burlington, says all major indicators continue to be positive in the province.
“I think the overall story is pretty positive in Ontario as cases are going down, including hospitalizations and deaths associated with COVID-19,” he told CP24.
He said the detection of a new subvariant of Omicron largely specific to Ontario, dubbed BA.2.20, was unfortunate but not of immediate concern, a view shared by several other epidemiologists cited in recent days.
“It’s unfortunate that a variant has probably emerged in Ontario or made its way elsewhere in Canada, but is more concentrated here.”
It appears to be increasing in prevalence across the province in recent weeks. It does not necessarily mean that there is bad news for us in the near future, that is, it does not necessarily mean that cases are increasing or that there will be a new wave in June or July, for example.
Across the province, the COVID-19 Scientific Advisory Board said Tuesday that wastewater monitoring data it goes on to suggest that transmission of the virus is declining in all regions except Northern Ontario.
General hospital admissions data was incomplete on Tuesday, but there were 157 patients in intensive care, five more than on Saturday but eight fewer than a week ago.
Of them, 65 were breathing with the help of a ventilator, the lowest number of ventilated patients seen in the province since November 11, 2020.
Of the 1,287 cases of COVID-19 confirmed by PCR tests in the last 48 hours, the Ministry of Health says that 165 involved unvaccinated or partially vaccinated people, 217 involved people with two doses of vaccine, 844 involved people with three or more doses of vaccine and the vaccination status of another 61 was unknown.
Provincial laboratories processed 6,534 test samples in the last 24 hours, generating a positivity rate of 10.5%.
The average positivity was 10.1 percent during the last 7 days and 11.6 percent during the previous week.
The Health Ministry says 7,467 doses of COVID-19 vaccine were administered between Sunday morning and Monday night at 8 p.m.
Of these, 415 were first doses, 635 were second doses, 1,241 were third doses, and 5,176 were fourth doses.
The numbers used in this story are from the Ontario Ministry of Health’s COVID-19. Daily epidemiological summary. The number of cases for any city or region may differ slightly from what the province reports, because local units report figures at different times.
Reference-www.cp24.com