TORONTO – 847 people in hospital with Covid-19, 273 of them in intensive care. Hospital admissions in Ontario are still decreasing: yesterday there were 914 patients, of which 278 in intensive care. And it’s good to remember that of the people admitted to hospitals only 44% are there due to Covid-19, because the remaining 56% went to the hospital for other reasons and discovered that they were positive only after the swab done at the time of admission. The percentages change in intensive care: 82% of patients are in ICU mainly due to Covid-19, while 18% of cases are there for other reasons, but they also have the virus. Therefore, fewer and fewer hospitalizations actually occurred due to Covid-19.

However, the number of victims in Ontario remains high: today another 27 (six of which occurred in long-term care homes) were added to the tragic toll of Covid-19 which reaches 12,478 deaths. As for the infections, today 1,959 were recorded, based on 18,094 tests (reserved, we remind, to the “at risk” categories) processed in the last 24 hours: the positive rate of the province is 11.8% .

In the Greater Toronto Area, provincial health officials reported 274 new cases in Toronto, 113 in the Peel region, 113 in the Durham region, 107 in the York region and 54 in the Halton region. 160 new cases were also detected in Simcoe-Muskoka, 132 in Ottawa, 88 in the Kingston area, 82 each in Thunder Bay and in the Niagara region and 75 in Hamilton. All other areas reported fewer than 70 new cases. 51 cases were detected among the residents of long-term care homes and 37 among the staff of these same structures: 71 are the rest homes with an ongoing outbreak. The active and known infections in Ontario are now 16,976, a sharp drop compared to the 17,455 of yesterday even if, we repeat, the number is far from reality due to the few tests carried out. 2,411 cases of the disease resolved today: now the recoveries since the beginning of the pandemic amount to 1,075,692, while the total number of laboratory confirmed cases in Ontario is 1,105,146.

As in Ontario, also in Quebec the number of victims continues to worry: today another 20, leading the French-speaking province to cross and exceed the sad milestone of 14,000 victims since the beginning of the pandemic: 14,016. However, hospitalizations linked to the health emergency are collapsing: now the total number of patients in the hospital is 1,381, down by 58. In intensive care, patients are 82 patients (-8).

Quebec has detected 1,630 new cases, out of 17,424 tests performed, however, only on the “at risk” categories, such as in Ontario. More reliable, therefore, is the data that emerges from the self-declarations of citizens in the government portal where it is possible to insert the results of do-it-yourself tests done at home: today, out of 385 rapid tests entered, 297 were positive. The total balance, since the online self-declaration portal was activated, is impressive: out of 99,094 rapid tests entered, 77,334 are positive. This is the picture of the real situation: with the Omicron variant, the virus – albeit in a milder form – has spread like wildfire, infecting almost all of the population, vaccinated or not.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, 924,309 cases have been detected in Quebec: 895,000 healings.

Photo by Irwan iwe on Unsplash