TORONTO – Covid-19: hospitalizations are decreasing, both in ordinary and intensive care wards, but the number of victims remains high. 37, today, the deaths recorded in Ontario where 12,204 people have died since the start of the pandemic. 

However, we said, there is the good news of hospitalizations, which today in Ontario fell to the lowest levels since the first week of January. After a steady decline that has occurred in recent weeks, provincial health officials have in fact recorded the presence of 1,342 people covered in hospital with Covid-19, the lowest number since last January 4 when they were 1,290.

In intensive care, 356 people are being treated for the virus, the lowest number of hospitalizations since January 7, when there were 338.

Among other things, it is good to remember that not all the people present in the hospital with Covid-19 have been covered for Covid-19: only 52% have been hospitalized due to the virus. while the remaining patients ended up in the hospital for other reasons and only found out they were positive there. In ICUs, the percentage of patients with a cause of the virus is 80%.

On the contagion front, Ontario recorded 2,327 today, even if the number is far from reality due to the limitation of access to molecular tests only to “at risk” categories. 18,462 tests processed in the last 24 hours, with a positivity rate of 11%. Most of the new infections were identified in the Greater Toronto Area: 312 cases in Toronto and 134 in the Peel region. Other areas with more than 100 cases include Simcoe-Muskoka (164), Ottawa (182) and Windsor-Essex (106). There are now 23,048 active and known cases in Ontario.

The trend of decreasing hospitalizations is also confirmed in Quebec: today there are 1,902 hospitalized patients, therefore 93 fewer than yesterday. 124 people in intensive care, with a decrease of 5. But even in Quebec, as in Ontario, deaths are always too many: today another 22, bringing the total in the province, since the beginning of the pandemic, to 13,812.

2,055 new cases of coronavirus registered today – notwithstanding the scarcity of tests carried out: 21,223. The only reliable data, for infections, is that of the government portal where citizens can self-declare the results of do-it-yourself tests at home: according to the data updated today, out of 86,105 self-declared rapid swabs, 66,913 were positive (today, out of 584 declared, 441 were positive). But “officially”, according to updated data by calculating only the “government” molecular tests, the active and known cases of Covid-19 in Quebec are 25,789.

Slight decline in hospitalized also in Alberta, a province that has long been in a situation of total emergency on the hospital front. On Wednesday, the hospitalized were 1,500, against 1,561 on Tuesday (last February 7th they were 1,676). On the other hand, 121 patients are in intensive care, a decrease compared to the previous days.

Unfortunately, the number of deaths remains high: another 14 deaths were recorded on Wednesday, including a person around the age of 20, the twenty-fourth victim under 30 years of age since the start of the pandemic. The remaining dead were between the ages of 40 and 80. In the past seven days, 79 Alberta residents have died from Covid-19, 3,804 since the start of the pandemic.

The active and known cases in Alberta are now 17,674, but also in this case the scarcity of tests carried out makes the data unreliable.

Finally, let’s see the state of hospitalizations throughout Canada, province by province: Quebec 1,902, Alberta 1,500, Ontario 1,342, British Columbia 762, Saskatchewan 410, Manitoba 308, New Brunswick 79, Nova Scotia 66, Newfoundland and Labrador 16, Prince Edward Island 6.

In the pic, Chinook Regional Hospital in Lethbridge, Alberta (photo by Graham Ruttan on Unsplash)