Provincial health officials say there are now 804 COVID-19 patients receiving hospital treatment, down slightly from 807 on Thursday but from 667 a week ago.  This includes 167 patients with COVID in the ICU, an increase of six weeks each week.
The county says 49 percent of hospitalized patients were admitted for COVID-19 while 51 percent were admitted for other reasons.  About 71 percent of ICU patients were admitted for COVID-19 while 29 percent were admitted for other conditions, but then tested positive for the virus.
Another 18 virus-related deaths were confirmed today, including nine last month and another nine more than a month ago.
Despite the increase in transmission and hospitalization, Ontario Health Minister Christine Eliot said Thursday that the province “remains on track”, noting that public health measures are unlikely to be reintroduced by the provincial government.
Dr Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease specialist at Toronto General Hospital, told CP24 on Friday that while the county is seeing an increase in transmission, we are in a better position now than we were months ago when public health restrictions such as vaccine passports and a mandatory mask were required.
“By all means, we can recognize that we are in a wave right now and the cases are rising and there are even early indications that hospitalizations are increasing, but when you take a step back and look at where we are in Ontario and Canada right now, I mean “We have about 90 percent of our population over the age of five with at least one first dose of vaccine, about 86 percent of the population over the age of five with two doses of the vaccine,” he said.  Friday morning before the publication of today’s data.
“A significant proportion of the population is infected and has recovered. What I’m trying to say is that we are not the same as we were six months or a year ago. We have tremendous protection at the community level. That does not mean this wave is not happening. Of course it happens and some people will get sick, and some will land in the hospital, and unfortunately, some will die.But as a community we are definitely in a better position now to face a wave than we were three months, six months, a year before”.
Another 3,519 new cases of the virus have been confirmed by provincial laboratories, but this number is significantly underestimated due to testing limitations.
With 17,468 tests processed in the last 24 hours, officials report a positive rate of 16.4 percent across the province, up from 12.6 percent last week.
The numbers used in this story are in the Ontario Department of Health’s Daily Epidemiological Summary COVID-19.  The number of cases for any city or region may differ slightly from that reported by the province, as local units report data at different times.