Over 3,200 COVID-19 hospitalizations in Ontario; record number of single-day ICU admissions

There are currently over 3,200 people hospitalized with COVID-19 and a record number of adults with the virus were admitted to intensive care units in the past 24 hours.

Health Minister Christine Elliott tweeted on Tuesday that 3,220 people are in Ontario hospitals with the virus, up from 2,467 yesterday. Yesterday’s data, however, was a partial count as more than 10 per cent of hospitals don’t report over the weekend.

As of Monday, 61 children between 0 to 4 years old were hospitalized with the virus, which represents the largest COVID-19 hospitalization rate among patients under 60 years old.

Of those currently in hospital with the virus, 477 are in intensive care units, up from 438 yesterday and from 266 a week ago, according to the Ministry of Health.

A record 80 adults were admitted to the ICU yesterday, marking a record for daily ICU admissions since the pandemic began over two years ago, according to data from Critical Care Services Ontario provided by the Ontario Health Association (OHA).

Elliott said 54 per cent of admitted hospital patients testing positive for COVID-19 were admitted for treatment of COVID symptoms while 46 per cent were admitted for a different medical issue and happened to test positive for coronavirus.

Eighty-three per cent of COVID-19 patients in intensive care are being treated primarily for coronavirus infection while 17 per cent were admitted to ICU and incidentally tested positive for COVID-19.

The OHA said a total of 1,765 ICU beds were full on Monday, resulting in a total of 578 adult ICU beds available across the province. As of Jan. 9, over 90 per cent of all hospital beds were occupied, up 1.5 per cent from the previous day.

Although the hospital system is overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients, Ontario Health CEO Matthew Anderson says the rate of hospitalizations appears to be easing.

"The one thing I would say that perhaps is some good news for us at this moment is that the rate of increase on hospitalizations seems to be slowing, and the rate of positivity on our  PCR network also seem to be slowing... it's still a little bit early days to declare what that means from a trend perspective," he said during a news briefing Tuesday afternoon.

"...(there's) an expectation that we will continue to see cases rise over the next week or so. Cases should then start to to maximize or plateau and then we would start to see that phenomenon happening with hospitalizations towards the end of January and ICU in February," he added.

So far, over 87 per cent of Ontarians five years and older have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, 82 per cent have received two doses and 35 per cent have received three doses.

The ministry says another 21 deaths occurred in the past month, raising the death toll to 10,399.

Meanwhile, another 9,893 people recovered from the virus in the past 24 hours.

Provincial labs processed 45,451 tests yesterday, producing a positivity rate of 24.4 per cent, according to the ministry. The seven-day rolling average of the positivity rate stands at 27.6 per cent compared to 30.9 per cent this time a week ago.

Ontario reported 7,951 new coronavirus cases today, down from 9,076 and 11,352 a week ago. However, case counts are likely an underestimate due to limited testing capacity which is reserved for the highest-risk individuals.

COVID-19 outbreaks among the highest-risk settings continue to rise. There are currently 369 active COVID-19 outbreaks in long-term care homes across the province, up from 231 a week ago.

To date, there have been 896,248 lab-confirmed coronavirus infections and 747,289 recoveries since Jan. 2020.

The latest numbers come as the government announced yesterday that students would be returning to in-person learning on Monday after pivoting to remote learning last week following the holiday break.

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.