Ontario reports lowest COVID test positivity rate in nearly 6 months

Ontario reported its lowest COVID-19 test positivity rate in six months, along with 11 net new deaths on Wednesday.

Ontario labs processed 11,234 tests in the past 24 hours, compared to nearly 13,000 tests a week ago. As a result, today’s positivity rate dropped to 6.4 per cent compared to 7.2 per cent yesterday and 8.3 per cent seven days ago.

Today’s positivity rate marks the lowest in the province since Dec. 15, 2021 when it was at six per cent.

In the past month, indicators of COVID-19 spread have been declining across most metrics, including wastewater signal data, test positivity and hospitalizations.

“We know that COVID is still out there. Having said that, it's way different now than it was one month and two months ago. You keep seeing the rates of COVID dropped by basically every metric, you know, percent positive cases, hospitalizations, ICU admissions, wastewater surveillance. I mean, we are way down throughout the entire province,” infectious diseases specialist Dr. Isaac Bogoch told CP24 Wednesday morning.

The province confirmed 1,013 more cases today but health officials continue to say that daily case counts are an underestimate due to limited access to PCR testing.

The Ministry of Health confirmed 11 net new deaths today, with seven occurring in the past month and four deaths occurring more than a month ago.

Two of the latest deaths were long-term care home residents.

Since March 2020, the province has reported 13,304 virus-related deaths.

The ministry says there are 522 patients with the virus in Ontario hospitals, 200 less from this time a week ago.

Of those in hospital, 114 are in intensive care, down from 127 a week ago.

The ministry says 40 per cent of those hospitalized patients were admitted for COVID-19-related reasons and 60 per cent were admitted for other reasons but subsequently tested positive for the virus.

Meanwhile, 69 per cent of those ICU patients were taken to hospital for virus-related reasons and 31 per cent were admitted for other reasons but tested positive for the virus.

Among the latest cases reported today, 598 of the individuals received three or four doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, 172 received two doses, 115 are partially or unvaccinated and 128 have an unknown vaccination status.

Yesterday, over 14,700 vaccine doses were administered in the province.

To date, 90 per cent of Ontarians aged five years and older have received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, 87 per cent have received two doses and 52 per cent have received three doses.

The numbers used in this story are found in the Ontario Ministry of Health's COVID-19 Daily Epidemiologic Summary. The number of cases for any city or region may differ slightly from what is reported by the province, because local units report figures at different times.