TORONTO – Now we are going from record to record: today Ontario recorded 13,807 new cases of coronavirus, beating the record of 10,436 cases on Wednesday. The seven-day moving average of daily infections has now hit another record, 10,328 – a week ago it was 4,002. 

But these are numbers that represent only the tip of the iceberg: as the Omicron variant spreads throughout the province of Ontario, public health units are increasingly under siege due to the strong demand for tests but Ontario laboratories fail to keep up, so much so that today they processed 67,301 tests (more than 59,259 on Wednesday) but there are still 96,000 tests under investigation. The provincial government said it aims to process 78,000 tests per day but, in recent weeks, it has only come close to that figure once, when more than 72,000 tests were processed on Christmas Eve. In any case, taking today’s data as valid, in fact every 5 people tested, 1 is positive.

Let’s see where today’s infections are: in the Greater Toronto Area, Toronto reported 3,478 new cases (compared to 2,715 the day before today), while 1,468 were recorded in the Peel region, 1,224 in York, 732 in Halton and 538 in Durham . The cases activated and known throughout the province are now 86,754.

Currently, 965 people are hospitalized in Ontario hospitals, up from 726 on Wednesday, and 200 of these patients are in intensive care units. Of the patients admitted to hospital in the past 24 hours, 182 are unvaccinated, 24 are partially vaccinated and 399 are fully vaccinated.

Today, another 8 people died from the virus in the past month, bringing Ontario’s total death toll since the start of the pandemic to 10,179.

So far, 87% of Ontarians aged five and over have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, and 81% have received two.

New record also for Quebec which today recorded 14,188 new infections. Of the new cases, 11,262 (75.8%) involved people vaccinated twice, 2,324 (18.4%) not vaccinated or with a vaccine dose received less than two weeks ago, and 602 (5.7%) with one dose vaccine received more than two weeks ago. Now there are 86,866 active and known cases in Quebec, an increase of 8,651 in just 24 hours.

The province also recorded 9 deaths which bring the total, since the beginning of the pandemic, in the province to 11,711.

Hospitalizations increased by 135, with 229 more people and 94 discharged. There are now 939 hospitalizations for Covid-19, of which 138 in intensive care, for an increase of 16 units. Of the new patients, 122 were vaccinated twice or received the second dose more than seven days before admission, 102 were not vaccinated or received a dose of the vaccine less than two weeks before, and 5 received a dose of more vaccine. than two weeks ago.

Currently, 89% of Quebecers have received one dose of the vaccine, 82% have received two and 15% have received three. today evening, a press conference by Premier François Legault was scheduled to announce a three-week curfew in Quebec.

The virus is rampant across Canada. In Manitoba, for the third consecutive day the record of new daily cases was broken: today, 1,123 were recorded, while the day before today there were 947 and the day before 825. It is the first time since the beginning of the pandemic that there are more than a thousand cases in 24 hours in Manitoba.

In British Columbia, the numbers are also rising: a record daily case count was recorded on Wednesday, 2,944. A number, however, “preliminary” because the analysis of all the swabs had not been completed. The active and known cases in British Columbia are now at 21,432. The median positivity rate is now at 14.5%. 206 patients admitted to hospitals: 66 of them are admitted to intensive care units. 5 deaths, bringing the total in British Columbia since the start of the pandemic to 2,419.

In Canada, there are now 232,119 active (and known) cases while deaths have been 30,268 since the start of the pandemic.

Image by TheOtherKev from Pixabay