TORONTO – Sudden leap forward in the positivity rate of Covid-19 in Ontario: from 12.2% on Sunday to 17.9% today. Only at the end of January it was so high. And this despite the low number of tests carried out because of the limitation of swabs to the “at risk” categories only: just over 6,200 tests processed in the last 24 hours, which revealed the presence of 1,741 positive people. 

The data on wastewater, provided by the Covid-19 Science Table of Ontario, seem to confirm this increase in infections: in almost all areas of the province, in fact, the concentration of the virus in wastewater has started to increase.

Another 4 deaths were confirmed today, bringing the total in Ontario, since the start of the pandemic, to 12,405. The number of people admitted to hospital with the disease has increased slightly since Sunday, but it should be remembered that some hospitals do not report data over the weekend. Today, however, there were 655 people being treated for coronavirus in Ontario hospitals, including 124 in intensive care.

The active and known cases in Ontario, officially, are now 19,436, a further increase from 19,149 yesterday.

A surge in the virus also in Quebec, where today the number of hospitalized inpatients increased: 1,115, compared to 1,048 on Sunday. 53 people in intensive care (-3). Also 1 death registered: the total since the beginning of the pandemic is now 14,325.

The new Covid-cases registered in Quebec on the basis of “official” swabs (the molecular ones, reserved only for the “at risk” categories) are 1,614, but the most realistic picture is that provided by the results of the do-it-yourself tests performed at home by citizens and included in the portal activated by the Quebec government: today, out of 1,292 self-declared tests, 1,085 were positive. Since the portal was activated, of the 128,148 self-declarations inserted, those with a positive result at Covid-19 are 101,747. But the active and known cases in Quebec are, officially, 22,489. A number far from reality but still far higher than just five days ago: the active and known cases last Thursday were in fact 16,067.

All data, these, that go in one direction: the Omicron 2 variant is now rampant, generating thousands of new infections every day, even if it is evidently less serious than the previous ones since intensive care continues to decline despite the increase in hospitalizations which, however, in ordinary wards, concern approximately 50% of patients who actually went to hospitals for different reasons and, at the time of the entrance test, are also positive for Covid-19, despite being asymptomatic.