Quebec reports spike in COVID-19 hospitalizations, ICU numbers and deaths

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Quebec saw another spike in COVID-19 hospitalizations on Tuesday with an increase of 38 patients in the province's hospitals, including 10 more patients in intensive care.

The Ministry of Health told CTV News, however, that hospitalization and ICU numbers often are higher on Monday and Tuesdays daily updates due to hospital staff shortages on the weekends.

The province said 135 new patients checked in for COVID-19 treatment and 97 were discharged for a hospitalization total of 1,153.

Of those, 63 people are in ICUs.

Of the new patients, 80 were triple-vaccinated when checking in, 23 were double-vaccinated, 17 were unvaccinated and four received one dose of vaccine.

Five patients' vaccination status was unknown and six were under five years old and ineligible to receive a dose.

There were also 20 new deaths due to the novel coronavirus reported, bringing that total to 14,345 since the start of the pandemic.

NEW CASES

Out of 12,557 PCR tests that were analyzed, 2,171 came back positive for a positivity rate of 15 per cent.

In addition, 1,347 of the 1,617 self-declared rapid tests were positive.

There have been 961,383 positive PCR tests and 104,401 positive self-declared rapid tests recorded in Quebec since the start of the pandemic.

The Health Ministry is monitoring 474 active COVID-19 outbreaks (up 50) and there are 19,459 active cases in the province, an increase of 967.

On March 27, 13,139 samples were analyzed.

VACCINATION CAMPAIGN

The province's health-care professionals administered 4,395 more doses of vaccine, including 4,287 in the past 24 hours.

The ministry says just under 4.2 million Quebecers are triple-vaccinated, 2,440,230 are double-vaccinated, 709,912 people are unvaccinated, and 173,933 have received one dose of vaccine.

There are also 661,601 children between five and 11 years old who are considered fully vaccinated and 405,094 children under five.

The percentage of triple-vaccinated Quebecers remains 53 per cent of the eligible population.