COVID-19 patients in Ontario ICU soar to 412, nearly 12K new cases logged

Another 21 people have died after contracting COVID-19 in Ontario as the number of patients in intensive care with the disease continues to rise.

On Sunday, health officials said that at least 412 people were in intensive care as a result of COVID-19. Of those patients, 226 are breathing with the assistance of a ventilator.

The number of COVID-19 patients in ICU was 385 on Saturday, 338 on Friday and 219 on Thursday.

There are at least 2,419 people in hospital who have tested positive for COVID-19 as of Sunday morning. This represents a slight drop from Saturday, however officials noted that not all hospitals provide COVID-19 data on weekends.

Vaccination data for hospitalized patients is also not available.

Ontario is also reporting an additional 11,959 infections, however officials have said the number of infections reported each day is an underestimation due to a lack of testing.

With just over 49,400 tests processed in the last 24 hours, the Ministry of Health says Ontario’s positivity rate is about 27.7 per cent.

Of Sunday's cases, the province says that 9,522 were found in fully vaccinated individuals while 2,057 were in people who were either not vaccinated or partially vaccinated. Three hundred and eighty people infected with COVID-19 have an unknown vaccination status.

Health experts have said the number of fully vaccinated people who contract COVID-19 will naturally rise as the number of people who get the vaccine increase. Vaccination has proven to reduce risk of hospitalization and severe symptoms.

An additional 21 people have died after contracting COVID-19, officials said, bringing the province’s total death tally since the beginning of the pandemic to 10,366.

Since the pandemic began, there have been at minimum 878,591 lab-confirmed cases in Ontario, including deaths and recoveries.

WHERE ARE THE COVID-19 CASES?

The majority of cases continue to be found in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area.

According to the province’s epidemiology report, there are 2,198 infections in Toronto, 1,664 in Peel Region and 1,052 in York Region. Hamilton is reporting 697 new infections on Sunday while there are 641 cases in Durham and 632 in Halton.

Other municipalities reporting more than 400 new cases include Waterloo (604), Windsor-Essex (558), Ottawa (525), Middlesex-London (482) and Niagara (417).

Four other municipalities reported more than 100 new infections while all other public health units have fewer than 100 cases.

Of the infections reported Sunday, 835 were identified in children under the age of 12 while another 900 were found in youth between the ages of 12 and 19.

There were 4,722 cases in people between the ages of 20 and 39 and another 3,551 cases in people between the ages of 40 and 59.

At least 1,939 infections were identified in people over the age of 60, including at least 204 long-term care residents.

Four of Sunday’s 21 deaths were residents of long-term care, the province said.

In addition, 55 more health-care workers have contracted the novel coronavirus.

The province says that more than 133,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine were administered in the last 24-hour period. In total, about 91.1 per cent of Ontarians over the age of 12 have received at least one dose, while 88.4 per cent have received two doses.