Ontario reported 20 net new COVID-19 deaths on Saturday along with 722 people hospitalized with the virus.
The Ministry of Health says 16 of the deaths reported today occurred in the last month and four deaths occurred more than one month ago.
Two of the deaths were long-term care home residents.
On Friday, the ministry began a new method of reporting COVID-19 deaths by providing the “fatality type” including whether COVID was the underlying cause of death, contributed to the death, or if the cause of death is unknown or missing from provincial data.
However, the breakdown of today’s reported deaths has not yet been released.
The ministry also changed the COVID-19 death tally to exclude fatal cases of COVID-19 where the cause of death was found to be unrelated to the virus.
There have been 12,247 virus-related deaths reported by the province since March 2020.
The ministry says there are currently 722 people in hospital with the virus, up from 717 yesterday, but down from 795 a week ago.
Health Minister Christine Elliott says 47 per cent of patients were admitted for COVID-19 and 53 per cent were admitted for other reasons but have tested positive for the virus.
Meanwhile, 232 of those hospitalized patients are in intensive care, compared to 253 a week ago.
Seventy-seven per cent of ICU patients were admitted to hospital for the virus and 23 per cent were admitted for other reasons but have tested positive for COVID-19, according to Elliott.
Ontario labs processed just over 13,000 tests yesterday, producing a positivity rate of 12.1 per cent, according to the ministry.
The province confirmed 2,015 lab-confirmed coronavirus cases today but health officials say that is an undercount due to testing restrictions.
The vaccination status of today’s cases are unavailable due to technical difficulties, the ministry says.
So far, 89 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 50 per cent have received three doses.
To date, there have been 1,123,709 lab-confirmed coronavirus cases and 1,095,221 recoveries in Ontario since Jan. 2020.
Yesterday marked two years since the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 global pandemic.
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.
