Ontario officials say no new virus-related deaths were confirmed over the past 24 hours but the province is once again seeing an uptick in COVID-19 hospitalizations and intensive care admissions week-over-week.

According to officials, there are now 857 COVID-19 patients receiving treatment in Ontario hospitals, including 168 in the ICU. That is up from 655 and 158 respectively one week ago.

With no new virus-related deaths confirmed today, Ontario's COVID-19 death toll remains at 12,470.

Another 2,248 cases were confirmed by provincial labs today but that continues to be a significant undercount due to restrictions on who is eligible to be tested.

Of those confirmed new cases, 309 involve those who are not fully vaccinated, 525 involve patients with two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, 1,226 involve people who have received three shots, and 188 involve those with an unknown vaccination status.

With just 11,195 tests processed over the past 24 hours, Ontario is reporting a provincewide positivity rate of 19 per cent, the highest positivity rate recorded since January 18.

Experts have said that the province will see a rise in the number of hospitalizations this spring following the easing of public health restrictions, including mandatory masking in most public spaces and removing capacity limits inside businesses.

Dr. Peter Juni, the scientific director of Ontario's Science Advisory Table, told CP24 last week that it is "very clear" Ontario is now in a new wave of the pandemic.

“When you look at our wastewater, it's very clear. You can call it whatever you want, you know; whether it’s a resurgence of the Omicron wave we had or a sixth wave," he said.

“The point here really is it's entirely our responsibility what we're seeing and we just got a little bit too much ahead of ourselves and here we are... and we just have our task at hand to keep the slope of the wave upwards relatively flat so that we are not challenged again in our hospitals.”

The numbers used in this story are found in the Ontario Ministry of Health's COVID-19 Daily Epidemiologic Summary. The number of cases for any city or region may differ slightly from what is reported by the province, because local units report figures at different times.