Ontario reported one additional COVID-19 death on Tuesday, as the number of patients admitted to hospital with coronavirus continued to climb higher than numbers observed late last week.
The Ministry of Health said the death occurred sometime in the past 30 days.
There have now been 63 COVID-19 deaths reported in the past 7 days and 320 in the past 30 days.
There have been 12,633 deaths due to COVID-19 recorded in Ontario since March 2020.
Meanwhile, hospitalizations climbed to a new multi-month high of 1,486 on Tuesday.
Of those, 206 were in intensive care – up 24 from one week ago – and 87 were breathing with the help of a ventilator.
Overall hospitalizations are up nine per cent from this time last week and 36 per cent from this time 14 days ago.
The Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table now estimates hospital admissions will grow by up to 247 patients per week.
Hospital occupancy due to COVID-19 was last this high on Feb. 15.
Speaking later on Tuesday, Health Minister Christine Elliott said she does not foresee hospitalizations to reach the same levels they did in mid-January.
"Based on the modelling that’s been done by the Science Advisory Table, we don’t anticipate that this is going to hit the same heights that were reached during the fifth peak."
Approximately 55 per cent of those who test positive for COVID-19 after being admitted to hospital were brought to hospital for a reason other than coronavirus infection.
Among ICU patients, the number of “incidental” admissions falls to 20-25 per cent.
The number of hospitalized patients fell during the weekend because not all hospitals report bed occupancy to the province on weekends and public holidays.
Of the 1,218 cases detected through PCR testing on Tuesday, the Ministry of Health, 164 involved unvaccinated or partially vaccinated people, 239 involved people with two doses of vaccine, 699 involved people with three vaccine doses, while the vaccination status of 116 other cases was not yet known.
Provincial labs processed 15,322 specimens in the previous period, generating a positivity rate of at least 17.9 per cent.
Across the province, the Science Table says wastewater concentrations are still rising in eastern, central east and central west Ontario but declining in the GTA, southwestern Ontario and the north.
The province administered 22,568 COVID-19 vaccine doses on Monday.
Of those, 705 were first doses, 813 were second doses, 3,161 were third doses and 17,889 were fourth doses.
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.
