Ontario is turning the corner on the sixth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, a leading infectious disease specialist said on Monday as the province reported no new deaths and the lowest positivity rate seen since March 20.
Ontario reported a positivity rate of 12 per cent on Monday, generated on 7,702 tests, the lowest number of tests completed in a 24-hour period since March 28.
There were no new deaths confirmed on Monday, the second time that has occurred in the past 30 days.
UHN infectious diseases specialist Dr. Isaac Bogoch says every metric still informed by accurate data tells him that Ontario is coming down from the peak of the sixth wave.
“It’s hard to know just exactly because we don’t have that same level of community-level testing,” he told CP24. “But if you reverse engineer how many possible cases we’re getting per day – if you look at the wastewater signal, the positivity, everything’s headed in the right direction. The one thing that takes a little bit of time is the hospitalizations and the ICU admissions.”
The Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table, citing wastewater data, estimates transmission has fallen in each of the six sub-regions it divides the province into, with the greatest declines in SARS-CoV-2 signal seen in the north, eastern Ontario and central Ontario east of the GTA.
“Probably in every public health unit in every region of Ontario, things are turning the corner or have turned the corner,” Bogoch said. “That’s not to say we’re done.”
Of the 1,206 new cases confirmed through PCR tests on Monday, 167 involved unvaccinated or partially vaccinated people, 219 involved people with two doses of vaccine, 777 involved people with three doses of vaccine and 43 involved people whose vaccination status was not known.
The rate of PCR-positive individuals on Ontario with three doses may be exaggerated as current testing eligibility in the province closely aligns with many of the groups (healthcare and congregate care workers, residents, first responders etc.) with the best overall third dose coverage.
Overall hospital occupancy provided by the province on Monday was incomplete, but there were 201 patients in hospital intensive care, down six from Sunday and 10 from one week ago.
Eighty-seven patients were breathing with the help of a ventilator, down three from Sunday and one week ago.
The Ministry of Health says that 6,019 COVID-19 vaccine doses were administered on Sunday.
Of those, 371 were first doses, 457 were second doses, 883 were third doses and 4,308 were fourth doses.
Across all age groups, 84.5 per cent of Ontario residents have at least one dose of a vaccine, 81.4 per cent have two doses and 49 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.
