COVID-19 hospitalizations in Ontario reach 1,188, another 11 deaths reported

Ontario’s COVID-19 hospitalizations near 1,200 As COVID-19 hospitalizations in Ontario climb, one infectious disease doctor is raising the alarm about health-care staffing.

Hospitalizations related to COVID-19 in Ontario rose to 1,188 on Saturday as health officials recorded 11 net new deaths due to the disease.

The number of patients in hospital with COVID-19 across the province is up over Friday’s total of 1,135.

Of those hospitalized, 45 per cent were admitted due to COVID-19 and 55 per cent tested positive after they were admitted for a different reason.

At least 779 patients are fully vaccinated, 171 are unvaccinated, and 44 are partially vaccinated. The vaccination status of the remaining patients is unknown.

There are currently 168 patients in ICU, 64 per cent of which were admitted due to a COVID-19 infection while the remaining 36 per cent tested positive after the fact.

Sixty-three of those patients are fully vaccinated, 28 are unvaccinated, and two are partially vaccinated. No other vaccination information was released.

The province said it performed 18,678 COVID-19 tests in the last 24 hours, which they said generated a positivity rate of 18.4 per cent.

Of those tested, 3,797 positive cases were identified, though limited access to PCR testing provincewide means that number is an underestimate.

The 11 net new deaths recorded Saturday push Ontario’s COVID-19 death toll to 12,548.

So far, the province has seen 1,192,437 lab-confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus since the onset of the pandemic. At the same time, 1,149,833 individuals have recovered since testing positive for the virus.