The number of patients in hospital with COVID-19 has fallen to its lowest level in more than a month, according to the latest data released by provincial health officials.
There are now a just over 1,500 patients with COVID-19 receiving treatment in hospital, down from 2,230 one week ago. This number includes 402 patients in the ICU, about 80 fewer ICU patients than there were seven days ago. The province does not release detailed hospitalization data over the weekend and cautions that data is incomplete due to a lack of reporting from some hospitals.
Provincial health officials say 22 new virus-related deaths were confirmed today and all occurred in the past 26 days, including one on Feb. 12, six on Feb. 11, five on Feb. 10, and the remaining occurring in the preceding days. Due to the removal of some deaths from the overall total, Ontario's net new deaths increased by 18 today, bringing the province's death toll to 12,093.
Five deaths confirmed today involve residents of long-term care homes. There are now 197 active COVID-19 outbreaks at Ontario long-term care homes, down from 290 just seven days ago.
Another 2,265 new cases were confirmed by provincial labs over the past 24 hours but this is not an accurate reflection of the true burden of infection in Ontario due to limitations on who is eligible for PCR testing.
Of the cases confirmed today, 330 involve those who are unvaccinated, 77 involve people who are partially vaccinated, 1,553 involve those who have at least two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, and 305 involve people with an unknown vaccination status.
With 13,998 tests processed over the past 24 hours, the province is reporting a positivity rate of 11.8 per cent, unchanged from last week.
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.
