Ontario officially moves to weekly reporting of COVID-19 data. Here's what the latest numbers show
CBC
Ontario has officially switched to weekly reporting of COVID-19 data, after more than two years of daily updates.
The last daily data came on Thursday. The change means that, for data specifically, CBC News will also move to publishing weekly stories. The Ministry of Health says that its databases will be refreshed by 2 p.m. on Thursdays.
Providing a clear, full picture about the state of COVID-19 in Ontario has become increasingly difficult over the last several months, after the province restricted lab testing and stopped providing school-related data publicly.
As of Thursday, there were 491 people with COVID-19 in hospitals. That's down from 536 at the same time last week.
Of those patients, 109 were being treated in intensive care. Roughly 55 per cent of people in ICU were admitted due to symptoms from the illness, while 45 per cent were already in critical care when they tested positive for the virus.
Over the course of the last seven days, another 33 Ontarians with COVID-19 died. The province's official death toll stands at 13,357.
According to Ontario's COVID-19 science advisory table, the signal of the virus in wastewaster has been steadily rising since the end of May. The last confirmed data point came on June 10, and while an extrapolation suggests the signal will continue to increase, those projections, however, are based on incomplete data.
A surge in the wastewater signal has portended every wave of the virus. For now, though, the rate of increase seems to be slower than previous waves caused by the Omicron variant.
