Ontario reported nearly 1,100 COVID-19 patients in provincial hospitals on Tuesday, a 40 per cent increase from one week ago, alongside nine additional deaths.
The Ministry of Health said there were 1,091 patients in hospital testing positive for COVID-19, up from 857 on Monday and 778 one week ago.
Of those, 173 were in intensive care, up by eight from one week ago.
Typically, about half of those admitted to acute care beds during the period of the Omicron variant were admitted for reasons other than COVID-19 but incidentally also tested positive for the virus.
In the ICU, about 75 to 80 per cent of COVID-19 patients are admitted as a direct result of coronavirus infection.
It’s the first time COVID-19 hospitalizations have exceeded 1,000 in Ontario since Feb. 26.
The province also reported nine net new deaths on Tuesday.
The Ministry of Health said six deaths occurred in the last 30 days and three occurred prior to that period.
There have been 65 COVID-19 deaths detected in the past seven days in the province and 341 in the past 30 days. There have been 12,479 confirmed deaths due to COVID-19 in Ontario since March 2020.
UHN infectious diseases specialist Dr. Isaac Bogoch says that whatever the macro-level data suggests, it’s clear to him that there is a full wave of COVID-19 occurring right now.
“It’s clear that we’re having a wave now, it’s clear that we have more cases than we did one week ago or two weeks ago.”
Yesterday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said the province was experiencing a “little spike” of COVID-19 transmission, that expanded hospital capacity could take care of without the need for any other restrictions.
Meanwhile, Toronto’s chief medical officer strongly encouraged all residents to wear masks in indoor public spaces, something that was legally required two weeks ago.
Bogoch said simply relying on hospitals to swallow the sick patients caused by this new wave is not a prudent strategy, because inevitably a portion of those people die.
“It’s clear we have more hospital capacity than we did for example at the peak of the last wave, but you don’t really want to get to a point where you have more and more people ending up in hospital. Because sadly some of those people die.”
Of the 1,991 cases detected through PCR testing on Tuesday, the Ministry of Health said 258 involved partially vaccinated or unvaccinated people, 541 involved people with two doses, 1,115 involved people with three doses and 77 involved people with unknown vaccination status.
The province says 6,195 vaccine doses were administered on Monday.
Of those, 745 were first doses, 1,244 were second doses and 3,150 were third doses.
Across the entire Ontario population, 84.3 per cent of residents have at least one vaccine dose, 81.1 per cent have two doses and 48.1 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.
