Ontario COVID numbers: 1,684 people in hospital and 212 in ICU

Ontario is reporting 1,684 people in hospital with COVID-19 on Saturday, with 212 in intensive care.

According to data released by the provincial government, that is up by 93 hospitalizations from the previous day, although the number of people in intensive care dropped slightly. On Friday, Ontario recorded 1,591 hospitalizations and 214 people in ICU.

The figures are also a jump from last Saturday when Ontario reported 1,130 people in hospital with COVID and 185 in an Ontario intensive care unit.

In an interview with Global News on Friday, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, Dr. Kieran Moore, admitted the province faced a “difficult” week. He said the “absolute peak” of community spread had passed but that hospitalizations, a lagging data point, could continue to grow next week.

“We anticipate a potential peak next week, sadly, of 240 Ontarians being in our intensive care unit,” Moore said. “A peak of around 2,000 Ontarians being in our hospital.”

“I just want to acknowledge it will be another rough week,” Moore added, saying that the surge could result in patients being moved between hospitals to reduce the strain on health care.

Ontario also reported 3,820 lab-confirmed COVID-19 cases on Saturday. That figure, experts say, is likely an underestimate of the true number of cases due to testing restrictions that limit access to PCR tests in the province.

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The test positivity for results published on Saturday was 17.3 per cent, a small increase from the 16.1 per cent reported for Friday.

The provincial case total since the pandemic began now stands at 1,238,060.

A further 23 deaths were reported Saturday, with one death added due to data cleaning. The provincial death toll since the pandemic began now stands at 12,728.

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According to the data, 91 per cent of those aged 12 and over are vaccinated against COVID-19 with two doses. The provincial data shows seven per cent remain unvaccinated.

In total, 32,572,210 vaccine doses have been administered in Ontario.

– with files from Global News’ Colin D’Mello