Ontario reports at least 438 COVID-19 patients in ICU, fewer than 10K new cases

The number of people in Ontario hospitals with COVID-19 continues to rise, with 438 patients now in intensive care.

According to the Ministry of Health, at least 26 more people are in the ICU due to the novel coronavirus in the last 24 hours. Of those patients, 234 are breathing with the assistance of a ventilator.

There are also at least 2,467 COVID-19 patients in hospital, a slight rise from Sunday.

Not all hospitals report COVID-19 data on weekends, officials say, and updated vaccination data is not available.

Ontario is also reporting fewer than 10,000 new COVID-19 cases for the first time in 2022.

On Monday, health officials logged 9,706 new cases of COVID-19; however it is important to note this statistic only represents lab-confirmed cases and the majority of Ontario's population cannot be tested due to provincial restrictions.

Forty-five additional cases were logged in health-care workers and 156 were found in residents of long-term care homes.

Data shows that of those infections, 1,917 were found in people who were not fully vaccinated or had an unknown vaccination status. Experts have previously said the number of infected individuals who are fully vaccinated will naturally increase as most of the population has received the shot. Vaccination still reduces risk of serious illness and hospitalization.

With just under 40,700 COVID-19 tests processed in the last 24-hour period, the Ministry of Health says the provincial positivity rate has dropped to about 26.7 per cent.

According to the province’s epidemiology report, there are 1,879 cases in Toronto, 1,310 new cases in Peel Region and 1,033 in York Region.

Other municipalities that reported more than 400 infections include Durham (680), Ottawa (565), Halton (437), Hamilton (412), and Simcoe-Muskoka (404).

An additional 12 deaths were also confirmed on Monday. Of those deaths, two were long-term care residents.

The total number of people who have died after being diagnosed with COVID-19 in Ontario now stands at 10,378.

The new infections also bring Ontario’s total number of lab-confirmed infections since the beginning of the pandemic to 888,297, including deaths and recoveries