TORONTO – The virus does not give up. Today, in Ontario, another 8 deaths related to Covid-19, bringing the total in the province, since the beginning of the pandemic, to 13,351. Even the number of hospitalizations, like yesterday, is not very comforting: there are still 506 patients with the virus in Ontario hospitals, so the drop is slight (yesterday they were 512, a week ago 522) compared to two weeks ago when hospitalizations had dropped by 34.9%, from 808 to 526. Now it remains around 500, a sign that the descent has slowed down. 

It matters just a little that only 43% of patients have been hospitalized due to the virus and that 57% have been hospitalized for other reasons and only subsequently tested positive for Covid-19: patients are anyway infected so the virus, even if perhaps in milder form, keeps running.

The number of people admitted to intensive care was also stable: 115 today, 1 less than the yesterday but 1 more than a week ago. There is no descent, therefore. And as many as 49 of those patients breathe with the help of a ventilator.

“Stall” also on the contagion front: today the Ontario laboratories elaborated 10,385 tests (reserved, as is well known, for the “at risk” categories) which made it possible to detect the presence of 786 new infections, with a positivity of 6.9%, exactly like yesterday and up from 6.4% a week ago.

The data on vaccination of the infected show, once again, that the coverage of the “old” doses is gradually disappearing: 532 of the infected today received three or more doses of a vaccine against Covid-19, 104 received two doses, 81 are partially or unvaccinated and 69 have unknown vaccination status. The campaign continues, however: today in Ontario more than 13,900 doses of the vaccine were administered across the province and, currently, 90% of Ontarians 5 years of age or older have received a dose of the vaccine, 87% received two doses and 52% received three.

Now the active and known cases in Ontario are, officially, 7,720, down from 7,901 yesterday. But the figure is based on “official” tests, those reserved for a small part of the population.

Those of today should be among the latest daily data relating to Ontario: starting tomorrow, in fact, the Province will switch from daily to weekly reports, “due to the improvement in pandemic conditions”. But there are those who consider it a mistake, like the infectious disease specialist Isaac Bogoch: “I think the numbers – the doctor told CP24 today – can help guide intelligent behavioral changes and I think that more detailed information and transparency are obviously fundamental. The daily updates were, perhaps, imperfect but still useful “.

Photo by SJ Objio on Unsplash