Ontario has added more than 90 net new deaths to its overall COVID-19 death toll today as the number of patients in hospital with the virus dipped to just over 4,000.
Provincial health officials confirmed another 92 virus-related deaths today, including 89 fatalities that occurred within the past month. This is the highest number of deaths reported by the province on a single day since Jan. 15, 2021, when 100 deaths were confirmed. That total however, included more than 40 historical deaths that hadn’t been included in previous tallies.
The total number of known virus-related deaths in the province is now 11,160.
The number of patients with COVID-19 in hospital is now 4,016, down from 4,132 one week ago. This includes 608 patients in the ICU, down from 626 on Tuesday but up from 589 last Wednesday.
The province says about 56 per cent of patients with COVID-19 were hospitalized due to the virus while 44 per cent were admitted for other reasons. In the ICU, 83 per cent of patients with COVID-19 were admitted due to the virus and 17 per cent were admitted for other conditions but have tested positive. About 50 per cent of patients with COVID-19 in the ICU have not been vaccinated.
Another 5,368 cases of the virus were confirmed today in Ontario but that number has consistently been far lower than the true total due to restrictions on who is eligible to be tested.
The province say 801 of those cases involve people who are unvaccinated, 191 involve people who are partially vaccinated, 3,805 involve those who have received at least two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, and 571 involve people with an unknown vaccination status.
With 33,687 tests processed today, officials are reporting a provincewide positivity rate of 14.1 per cent today, the lowest positivity rate confirmed in more than a month. Today's testing number is significantly lower than the nearly 80,000 tests the province says can be completed by provincial labs each day.
The number of outbreaks in long-term care homes in the province has dropped to 385 today from 422 one week ago.
Ontario's health minister confirmed Wednesday that 91.7 per cent of Ontarians aged 12 and older have received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 89 per cent have two received two shots.
Toronto's Medical Officer of Health Dr. Eileen de Villa said Tuesday there are signs that community transmission is waning after spread of the more infectious Omicron variant caused explosive growth in the province.
“We are seeing some indicators that are telling us that things are getting a little bit better, wastewater surveillance being one of them. We’ve seen some declines over the past few weeks at this point,” she said at a news conference at city hall on Tuesday morning.
“We are seeing the overall number of active confirmed outbreaks in the various settings that exist in the city also starting to tail off.”
Officials have repeatedly cautioned that Ontario's health-care system will still struggle throughout February even as case counts decline.
The province is set to loosen some public health restrictions starting on Monday. Restaurants will be permitted to allow patrons to dine indoors at 50 per cent capacity and gyms and movie theatres will also be allowed to reopen at 50 per cent capacity next 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.
