Ontario's COVID-19 hospitalizations decrease to 1,005, ICU admissions at 154

Health officials in Ontario are reporting 1,005 hospitalizations and 154 ICU admissions linked to COVID-19.

Thursday’s report marks a decrease over Wednesday’s when the number of patients in hospital reached 1,082 and ICU admissions totalled 160.

Government data shows that 614 of the patients in hospital are fully vaccinated, 152 are unvaccinated, and 29 are partially vaccinated. No other vaccination information was released.

Of those hospitalizations, 58 per cent are considered incidental, meaning those patents were not admitted due to COVID-19 but have since tested positive. The remaining 42 per cent were admitted due to their COVID-19 infection.

In the ICU, 59 patients are fully vaccinated, 14 are unvaccinated, and seven are partially vaccinated. The vaccination status of the remaining patients was not disclosed.

• Download our app to get local alerts to your device
• Get the latest local updates right to your inbox

Most of the patients in the ICU are there due to COVID-19 at 60 per cent. Meanwhile, incidental ICU admissions account for 40 per cent of all patients currently receiving care.

Twenty deaths due to COVID-19 were reported Thursday. However, the health ministry said that all of those fatalities occurred within the last month. This brings the province’s death toll to 13,195.

Of the 13,542 tests that were performed in the last 24 hours, 1,217 lab-confirmed cases of the virus were identified. Those tests also produced a positivity rate of 8.4 per cent, officials said.

Testing for COVID-19 in Ontario remains limited to select high-risk groups and the number of confirmed cases reported today is an undercount.

Since the start of the pandemic, Ontario has seen 1,298,778 lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19. At least 1,273,085 of those individuals have since recovered.