Ontario reported eight more COVID-19-related deaths on Wednesday as the number of hospitalizations and ICU stays declined.
The health ministry reported eight net new deaths in the past month.
There have been 13,351 virus-related deaths in the province since March 2020.
There are currently 506 patients in Ontario hospitals, up from 512 yesterday and 522 a week ago.
Of those hospitalized patients, 43 percent were admitted with the virus and 57 percent were admitted for other reasons and later tested positive for the virus.
Meanwhile, 115 of the hospitalized patients are in intensive care, one less than yesterday and up from a week ago.
The ministry says 53 per cent of ICU patients were admitted with COVID and 47 per cent were admitted for other reasons and tested positive for the virus.
Officials say that 49 ICU patients are breathing with the help of ventilators.
Ontario laboratories processed 10,385 tests in the last 24 hours, producing a positivity rate of 6.9 percent, compared to 6.4 percent a week ago.
The province confirmed 786 more infections today, but health officials say the number of daily cases is low due to limited access to PCR testing.
In the latest cases, 532 individuals have received three or more doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, 104 have received two doses, 81 are partially or unvaccinated and 69 have an unknown vaccination status.
Yesterday, the province delivered more than 13,900 vaccine doses across the province.
To date, 90 percent of Ontario people five years of age and older have received a single dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, 87 percent have received two doses and 52 percent have received three doses.
On Tuesday, the federal government announced it would suspend domestic and outbound international travel and vaccine mandates for federally regulated workers until June 20.
The requirements for foreign nationals coming to Canada will not change.
Infectious disease expert Dr. Isaac Bogoch says lifting the mandate should not lead to a significant increase in COVID infections.
“I honestly don’t think there’s going to be much in the way of harm from this, from the point of view of infection transmission, on public transport. I don’t and this is in the Omicron era. All these policies have to be up to date and keep up with the science,” he told CP24 on Wednesday morning.
As of Thursday, Ontario will transition from daily COVID reporting to weekly data as the pandemic situation improves.
Bogoch says he personally would have liked to see the daily reporting in place.
“I think numbers can help drive smart behavior change and I think more granular information and transparency is obviously important. But you know, you obviously don’t want to be weaponizing information and ever -Sometimes we saw it happen. My bias would be to keep those daily updates. They were incomplete but helpful nonetheless,” he told CP24 on Wednesday morning.
The numbers used in this story are found in the Ontario Ministry of Health’s COVID-19 daily epidemiological summary. The number of cases for any given city or region may differ slightly from what is reported by province, as local units report figures at different times.
