Ontario reports 21 new COVID deaths as hospitalization drop below 1,700

Ontario is reporting 21 new COVID-related deaths on Thursday, as hospitalizations drop below the 1,700-mark from the past two days.

So far, 12,792 people have died as a result of the virus but the province said one of the deaths was removed “from the cumulative total based on data cleaning.”

According to the latest provincial data, 1,661 are currently hospitalized with COVID-19, a drop from 1,734 reported on Wednesday and 1,730 on Tuesday. There are 202 patients in the ICU with a COVID-related illness and 77 are on a ventilator.

Health officials reported 3,560 new infections but that number is underreported due to limitations placed on the province’s testing capacity.

The scientific director of Ontario’s panel of COVID-19 advisers has said multiplying the daily case count by 20 would give a more accurate picture.

The province processed 18,875 tests over the past 24 hours with a positivity rate of 14.5 per cent, down from 15.2 per cent the day before.

On Wednesday, hospitalizations in Ontario reached the highest point since Feb. 11. Earlier this week, the province’s medical officer of health, Dr. Kieran Moore, said the virus is still circulating in communities, however, he added that he expects hospitalizations and ICU numbers to stabilize at some point in the next week.

While Ontario has seen a significant surge of cases amid the sixth wave of the virus — higher than at any other point in the pandemic, according to wastewater data — most health indicators suggest the wave has peaked across Canada.

Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease specialist with the University Health Network, said although the virus isn’t going away anytime soon, we may be close to moving from a pandemic phase to an endemic phase.

An endemic is defined as a time when an infection is maintained at a constant level within a population.

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With files from Meredith Bond of CityNews and The Canadian Press