The number of patients with COVID-19 at Ontario hospitals hit the lowest level seen in nearly three months, dropping below 600 today.
Provincial health officials say there are currently 551 COVID-19 patients currently receiving treatment in hospitals, down from 602 last week. COVID-related hospitalizations have not dipped below 600 since December 28, when 491 patients were receiving treatment in Ontario.
There are now 181 patients in intensive care, down from 228 one week ago and the lowest that number has been since late December.
It should be noted that not all hospitals report data to the province early in ther week.
An additional four virus-related deaths were added to the province's cumulative total on Monday, bringing Ontario's death toll to 12,336. This includes three deaths that occurred in the past month and one that occurred more than a month ago.
Officials say 1,217 new COVID-19 cases were confirmed by provincial labs over the past 24 hours but that is not an accurate reflection of the true burden of infection in Ontario due to significant restrictions on testing.
Of those cases confirmed today, 175 involve people who are not fully vaccinated, 295 involve those who have at least two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, 632 involve people who have received two doses plus a booster shot, and 115 involve people with an unknown vaccination status.
With 8.644 tests processed over the past 24 hours, officials are reporting a provincewide positivity rate of 13.4 per cent, up from 12.1 per cent last week.
Starting today, masks will no longer be mandated in a number of public settings, including retail stores, restaurants, schools, gyms, and movie theatres.
The Ford government previously announced that thanks to improving trends surrounding COVID-19 transmission in Ontario, it would no longer be requiring masks in many settings starting today. Masks are still required on public transit and in other high-risk settings, including long-term care homes.
Recently modelling released by the province's Science Advisory Table indicates that transmission will likely soon begin to rebound in Ontario but hospitalization levels aren't expected to return to anywhere close to what was seen during the peak of the Omicron wave in mid-January.
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.
