Ontario reports 554 new COVID-19 cases, 16 more deaths

For the second time in the last three days, Ontario is reporting a week-over-week decline in the number of new COVID-19 cases.

Provincial health officials logged 554 new COVID-19 cases today, a notable drop from the 656 infections reported last Wednesday and the 660 cases confirmed two weeks ago.

Today's case count is down from Tuesday's single-day tally of 564 and the 581 new infections reported on Monday.

Ontario Health Minister Christine Elliott said of the cases reported today, 418, or 75 per cent, are in those who are not fully vaccinated or have an unknown vaccination status. Vaccinated individuals account for 136 of the new cases today.

About 32 per cent of Ontarians are not yet fully vaccinated.

The rolling seven-day average of new cases has also started to decline.

The average daily case count is now 732, down from 746 on Tuesday and 741 on Monday. Week-over-week, the seven-day average is still up from 701 last Wednesday.

With 21,840 tests processed over the past 24 hours, officials are reporting a positivity rate of 3.3 per cent, up from 2.9 per cent one week ago.

The number of active COVID-19 cases in the province is now 6,040, up from 5,861 last Wednesday.

The province confirmed 16 more virus-related deaths today. Officials say 11 deaths occurred over the past week and five occurred more than two months ago.

Over the past seven days, the province has added 53 more fatalities to Ontario's overall death toll, however officials say 29 of those deaths occurred more than two months ago.

A count of individual hospitals and local public health units indicates that there are at least 365 people with COVID-19 at Ontario hospitals.

Virus-related intensive unit (ICU) care admissions continue to rise in the province. The Ministry of Health says there are 194 COVID-19 patients in the ICU, including 115 who are breathing with the assistance of a ventilator. That is up from 163 and 98 respectively one week ago.

The province says 186 people in the ICU are not fully vaccinated or have an unknown vaccination status and eight are fully immunized.

'We are kind of walking on eggshells'

While Ontario's case numbers appear to have levelled off over the past few days, many experts, including Ontario's chief medical officer of health, have warned that transmission will likely increase as people spend more time indoors this fall and students return to the classroom this week.

“I am confident that the school setting itself is safe. We’ve put in many precautions. We will see outbreaks, we will see activity in the schools but they basically reflect what’s going on the in community," Dr. Kieran Moore told reporters on Tuesday.

"We all will have to be cautious as the rate and risk increases and we do anticipate it increasing in the coming months.”

Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious diseases specialist, told CP24 on Wednesday that people in the medical community are concerned about Ontario's ICU capacity.

"Many of us in medicine, in science, or in public health who are watching this closely, we are kind of walking on eggshells at the moment. The numbers do matter... when you look at where we were last year versus where we are now, we do have more people in ICUs and that's really the pinch point," he said.

According to provincial data, at this time last year, only 25 patients with COVID-19 were receiving treatment in intensive care at Ontario hospitals.

"ICUs are limited in capacity in Ontario as they are elsewhere in Canada,” Bogoch said. “We just don't have a tonne of ICU capacity compared to other countries that are similar to Canada. That's tricky."

He noted that intensive care capacity was pushed to the brink during the third wave of the pandemic.

"We had to cancel all scheduled surgeries and shut down the province when there were about 550 people in Ontario ICUs because we were really threatened with having our health-care system being stretched beyond capacity," he said.

"We ended up with about 900 people in Ontario ICUs and that was dangerous."

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.