Ontario reported 28 net new COVID-19 deaths on Friday, as hospitalizations continued a weeks-long decline.
The Ministry of Health said 26 of the deaths occurred in the last 30 days and two others from earlier were just discovered and added to the total.
Six of Friday’s deaths involved residents of the long-term care system.
There have been 139 deaths reported in the past week and 874 in the past month, adding to a total of 12,525 since March 2020.
The Ministry said there were 821 patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 on Friday, down from 834 on Thursday and 284 one week ago.
Of those, 262 were in intensive care and 156 were breathing with a ventilator.
Yesterday, Ontario Chief Medical Officer Dr. Kieran Moore said that if current trends continue, the indoor mask mandate in public spaces and schools could lift by the end of the month.
He also suggested the province is not detecting approximately 90 per cent of infection at present, suggesting there could still be 20,000 infections occurring per day.
UHN infectious diseases specialist Dr. Isaac Bogoch told CP24 any decision on when to lift mask mandates should be informed by public health data.
“As long as this is evaluated week by week and trends are headed in the right direction, there certainly will be a time where mask mandates can and should be lifted and people can wear masks voluntarily,” he said.
“The time isn't right now and of course this is still a fluid area. Is it going to be at the end of March, is it going to be a little later in April, let’s just let the data drive the decision.”
Of the 2,085 new cases confirmed through limited free PCR testing on Friday, the Ministry of Health said 207 involved unvaccinated people, 54 involved partially vaccinated people, 1,638 involved people with at least two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, and 186 involved people with unknown vaccination status.
Provincial labs processed 15,925 test specimens in the past 24 hours, generating a positivity rate of 10.7 per cent, slightly above this week’s average of 10.24 per cent.
Only select groups can access free PCR diagnostic testing in the province.
The Ministry says 17,047 COVID-19 vaccine doses were administered on Thursday.
Of those, 1,867 were first doses, 4,687 were second doses and 8,853 were third doses.
Across all age groups, 85.2 per cent of Ontario residents have at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, 81.5 per cent have two doses and 47.5 per cent have 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.
