Quebec reported four new COVID-19 deaths as pandemic-related hospitalizations continued to fall Monday.
The number of patients being treated for the disease in hospital stood at 1,910, a drop of 16. This comes following 85 admissions and 101 discharges in the last day.
Intensive care units cases remained unchanged from the previous day at 66.
The province also recorded 622 new infections of the novel coronavirus based on PCR testing, which is only available to certain groups.
Health authorities say 16,694 tests were given at government-run screening sites Saturday, the most recent day for which that information is available.
Meanwhile, the results of 255 rapid tests were declared by Quebecers on the province’s online portal. Of those, 208 were positive for the virus.
The COVID-19 vaccination campaign issued another 7,586 doses in the last 24-hour period, for more than 19.6 million shots to date.
As of Monday, 6,357 health-care workers were absent from work for COVID-related reasons. That’s down from about 13,000 in mid-April.
Quebec has seen 1,052,637 official cases over the course of the health crisis. The pandemic has killed 15,143 people to date.
One in four Quebec adults developed antibodies
A new study by Quebec’s blood services organization estimates that more than one in four adults in the province developed COVID-19 antibodies between January and mid-March of this year.
The study by Héma-Québec, which was carried out at the request of the province’s Health Department, used a test that was able to detect COVID-19 antibodies in adult blood donors.
Researchers compared the presence of antibodies to an earlier sample from the same person taken before the arrival of the Omicron variant.
Using samples donated to the province’s plasma bank, the organization concluded that some 27.8 per cent of Quebec’s adult population was infected with COVID-19 in the first two and a half months of the year.
— with files from The Canadian Press
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