COVID-19 wastewater signal in Ottawa reaches new height

City of Ottawa lifts vaccine mandate Unvaccinated employees may return to work, as COVID cases continue to rise in Ottawa. CTVs Leah Larocque reports.

The COVID-19 viral signal detected in Ottawa’s wastewater has reached a new height, according to recent data and cases in local hospitals are rising.

The latest data from the wastewater monitoring project show a significant rise in the viral signal at the end of March. The seven-day mean viral signal has exceeded previous peaks in January 2022 and April 2021.

Co-lead investigator on the wastewater-monitoring project, Dr. Robert Delatolla, says the virus continues to spread rapidly.

“It is still not very good unfortunately. If you look at wastewater, since the beginning of March it has been ticking up, and then the weekend before the mask mandate was lifted, it has been going up tremendously fast; every data point higher than the last.”

Delatolla says the surge has yet to peak. “The better news is that the last data point it was still high, but not that much higher. We are still looking for it to crest but we haven’t hit that point yet,” he says.

The sixth wave is being driven by the omicron variant and its subvariant BA.2, which has been slowly increasing.

“If it was really being driven by BA.2, we would have seen a representative uptick in BA.2 coming into the community. We really don’t see that – we see a slow and gradual uptick of BA.2 That is very similar to what we see across the whole province, this slow incline of BA.2. That slope of rise is not representative of how high the wastewater is going right now,” Delatolla said.

Health officials continue to stress the need to be vigilant to prevent overburdening the health care system.

“It is almost like a second omicron wave is happening right now, so maybe there is some immunity memory there,” Dellatolla said. “When we had these kinds of situations in the past, we have had lag times of up to 2 weeks, even 20 days for hospitalizations. We aren’t in the clear yet, that’s for sure.”

Hospitalizations reported by Ottawa Public Health remained relatively stable over the weekend, rising by one since Friday to 11 residents. OPH is reporting zero people in the ICU because of an active COVID-19 infection.

OPH hospitalization figures only represent Ottawa residents who are in hospital because of an active case of COVID-19. Local hospitals report higher figures, which include patients who were admitted for reasons other than COVID-19 but have tested positive and patients who are not from Ottawa.

Here is a look at how many COVID-19 patients are in each hospital:

The number of COVID-positive patients reported by each hospital increased since Friday. There are 20 new patients reported across the four hospitals since April 1.

OPH reported 501 new laboratory-confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Ottawa since Friday. Daily case counts are an underrepresentation of the true level of COVID-19 in the community because PCR testing in Ontario remains restricted to certain high-risk populations.

One new COVID-19 related death was reported in Ottawa since Friday.

Health authorities reported 857 people in Ontario hospitals with COVID-19 on Monday, including 168 in intensive care. Zero new deaths were reported in the province on Monday, following 10 deaths on Sunday and nine on Saturday.

OTTAWA'S KEY COVID-19 STATISTICS

COVID-19 VACCINES IN OTTAWA

These figures are updated every Monday.

*Statistics on Ottawa residents with one or two doses include anyone with an Ottawa postal code who was vaccinated anywhere in Ontario.

AROUND THE REGION

These figures are based on the latest data from each respective health unit at the time of publishing.

COVID-19 OUTBREAKS

Ottawa Public Health is currently reporting active outbreaks in the following locations:

OPH no longer reports outbreaks in schools and childcare settings nor community outbreaks, such as those linked to local businesses, religious institutions, or sports and recreation activities.

A full list of locations with active outbreaks is available on OPH's COVID-19 dashboard.