Ontario reported its lowest percentage of positive tests for COVID-19 in six months, along with 11 net new deaths on Wednesday.
Ontario labs have processed 11,234 tests in the last 24 hours, up from nearly 13,000 tests a week ago. As a result, today’s positivity rate fell to 6.4% from 7.2% yesterday and 8.3% seven days ago.
Today’s positivity rate is the lowest in the province since December 15, 2021, when it was 6 percent.
Over the last month, the prevalence of COVID-19 has been declining on most indicators, including data on wastewater signals, positive test results and hospitalizations.
“We know that COVID is still there. Having said that, it is very different now than it was a month and two months ago. You continue to see that COVID levels are declining mainly for each indicator, you know, positive rates, hospitalizations, intensive care admissions, wastewater monitoring. I want to say that we are very down in the whole province “, said the specialist in infectious diseases Dr. Isaac Bogoch to CP24 on Wednesday morning.
The province confirmed another 1,013 cases today, but health officials continue to say the daily number of cases is underestimated due to limited access to PCR testing.
The health ministry confirmed 11 net new deaths today, seven in the last month and four more than a month ago.
Two of the latest deaths have been in long-term care homes.
Since March 2020, the province has reported 13,304 deaths related to the virus.
The ministry says Ontario hospitals have 522 patients with the virus, 200 less than a week ago.
Of the patients, 114 are in intensive care, which is less than 127 a week ago.
The ministry said 40% of those hospitalized patients were admitted for COVID-19-related reasons and 60% were admitted for other reasons but were subsequently tested positive for the virus.
Meanwhile, 69% of these patients in the intensive care unit were taken to hospital for virus-related reasons, and 31% were admitted for other reasons but tested positive for the virus.
Among the latest cases reported today, 598 received three or four doses of COVID-19 vaccine, 172 received two doses, 115 were partially or unvaccinated, and 128 had unknown vaccination status.
More than 14,700 doses of vaccine were administered in the province yesterday.
To date, 90 percent of Ontario residents aged five and over have received a single dose of COVID-19 vaccine, 87 percent have received two doses, and 52 percent have received three doses.
The numbers used in this story are in the Ontario Department of Health’s daily epidemiological summary for COVID-19. The number of cases for each city or region may differ slightly from that reported by the province, as local units report figures at different times.
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