Ontario confirmed 16 more COVID-19 deaths and nearly 1,700 hospitalizations on Tuesday.

The Ministry of Health says 15 of the latest deaths occurred in the last month and one fatality was added to the cumulative total due to data cleaning.

Two of the deaths were long-term care home residents.

Since March 2020, the province has reported 12,858 virus-related deaths.

Health officials say there have been 1,699 patients with the virus in Ontario hospitals in the past 24 hours, a notable rise from 1,423 a day ago. However, it should be noted that some hospitals don’t submit data over the weekend.

A week ago, the ministry reported 1,730 COVID-19 hospitalizations.

Forty-two per cent of current hospitalized patients were admitted for COVID-19-related reasons, while 58 per cent were admitted for other reasons but subsequently tested positive for the virus.

Among those in hospital, 202 are in intensive care, down nine from yesterday and down 17 from a week ago.

The ministry says 65 per cent of ICU patients were admitted with the virus, while 35 per cent were taken to hospital for other reasons but tested positive for the virus.

In the past 24 hours, provincial labs processed 11,755 tests, producing a positivity rate of 13.2 per cent, unchanged from a week ago, according to the ministry.

Officials confirmed another 1,547 infections today but daily case counts continue to be an underestimate due to limited access to PCR testing.

Among the latest cases, 952 of the individuals have received three doses of a vaccine, 251 have received two doses, 199 are unvaccinated or partially vaccinated and 145 have an unknown vaccination status.

Yesterday the province administered more than 22,000 COVID-19 vaccines.

To date, 90 per cent of Ontarians aged five years and older have received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, 86 per cent have received two doses and 52 per cent have received three 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.