Ontario's COVID-19 hospitalizations drop to 1,130, another 23 deaths reported since Thursday

The number of patients in an Ontario hospital with COVID-19 dropped below 1,150 on Saturday as the province reported another 23 deaths due to the disease over the past two days.

Ontario’s COVID-19 data was last updated on Thursday before Friday’s federal holiday when COVID-19-related hospitalizations in the province reached 1,392. The data shows that the number of patients in hospital rose on Friday to 1,427 before dropping to Saturday’s total of 1,130.

It should be noted that not all hospitals report patient data over the weekend.

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Of those currently in hospital, 740 are fully vaccinated, 164 are unvaccinated, and 34 are partially vaccinated. The vaccination status of the remaining patients is unknown.

Forty-eight per cent of patients currently receiving care in an Ontario hospital were admitted due to COVID-19 while 52 per cent tested positive after the fact.

In the ICU, there are 185 patients currently receiving care -- up from 177 on Thursday. Of those patients, 65 are fully vaccinated, 27 are unvaccinated, and three are partially vaccinated. No other vaccination information was provided.

Sixty-two per cent of those patients are being treated for COVID-19 and 38 per cent were admitted for a different reason but have since tested positive.

Labs across Ontario processed 20,538 tests on Thursday and 19,282 tests on Friday which the government said resulted in positivity rates of 18.8 and 18.5 per cent, respectively.

At least 8,533 positive cases of COVID-19 were identified through those tests, though that number is an underestimate to do limited access to PCR testing in the province.

At the same time, the province is reporting another 23 deaths due to COVID-19 over the last 48 hours. Twenty of those deaths occurred in the last month and three additional deaths were added to the province’s death toll of 12,629 based on what the ministry of health calls a ”data cleaning.”

Ontario has seen 1,217,574 lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. That number also includes 1,168,929 individuals who have recovered.