TORONTO – Still many deaths, but hospitalizations are decreasing. The doubt, which we have already expressed in our yesterday’s Covid updating, remains: in the daily “balance” of beds (i.e. the difference between new admissions to hospitals and discharges), in the “discharge” item only the recovered or even the dead are included?

With that question in mind, let’s look at today’s data for Ontario. Today, another 70 deaths linked to Covid-19, which bring the total from the beginning of the pandemic to 11,230. On the other hand, patients undergoing treatment in hospitals are decreasing, both in the ordinary wards – from 4,016 yesterday to 3,645 today – and, above all, those in intensive care, whose number returns to under 600 after a week: today they were 599. 82% of ICU patients were hospitalized for Covid-19, while the rest tested positive after being hospitalized for other ailments. In the ordinary wards, on the other hand, 57% of patients were hospitalized for Covid-19 while 43% for other diseases and then discovered at the hospital that they were also positive for coronavirus.

Of the 599 people admitted to the ICU, 221 are vaccinated with two doses, while the remaining 378 patients are unvaccinated, partially vaccinated or with an unknown vaccination status.

With just over 22,560 tests processed in the last 24 hours and 5,852 cases detected, today the province’s positive rate was 14.1%, exactly like the day before. Most of the infections detected today (however underestimated, as we have been repeating for weeks, due to the limitation of access to tests to only “at risk” categories), were identified in the Greater Toronto Area: 1,014 cases in Toronto, 842 in the region of Peel and 318 in the York region. Ottawa reported 417 new cases while eleven other public health units have registered more than 100 infections. Since the start of the pandemic, Ontario has recorded 1,016,099 laboratory-confirmed cases of Covid-19 (including deaths and recoveries) and, currently, there are 54,074 active and known cases, compared to 56,929 (another unlikely “decline” , given the scarcity of tests carried out).

Even Quebec, also today, recorded a high number of victims (56, bringing the total from the beginning of the pandemic to 13,065) and, at the same time, a drop in hospitalizations: 117 fewer people than yesterday are hospitalized with Covid-19, for a total remaining of 3,153 people. Intensive care admissions are down by 17, for a total of 235 people assisted.

Out of a total of 34,830 samples analyzed, Quebec today recorded 3,956 cases which bring the total number of infected people, since the beginning of the pandemic to 849,520, while the active and known cases are now 45,257. But it is an unreliable figure (as for Ontario) and the first numbers provided by the online portal activated by the Province of Quebec, where citizens can self-declare their state, prove it: out of a total of 23,081 rapid tests declared, 18,271 results were recorded positive.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay