Ottawa has now had more COVID-19 deaths in 2022 than 2021
CBC
Recent developments:
The region is in the seventh wave of the COVID-19 pandemic driven by the BA.5 coronavirus subvariant. It's the first early-summer wave.
In its most recent weekly update Thursday, Ottawa Public Health (OPH) said the city's COVID levels were very high and concerning.
OPH specifically wants people to limit contacts, consider masking in crowded outdoor areas as well as inside and asks businesses to consider bringing back policies such as mandatory masks.
The local health-care system is again being strained by the combination of the pandemic load and staff shortages.
Wastewater
The average level of coronavirus in Ottawa's wastewater is very high. It rose for more than a month starting in early June and has slowly dropped eight of the last 10 days of data.
That average as of July 24 is about two times higher than it was a month ago and about 15 times higher than a year ago.
Hospitals
Forty-four Ottawa residents have been admitted to a city hospital with COVID-19, according to OPH's latest update. That number has been rising all month and hasn't been this high since early February.
One of those patients is in intensive care.
One year ago, there were three of these hospital patients and two years ago, there were nine.
The hospitalization figures above don't include all patients. For example, they leave out patients admitted for other reasons who then test positive for COVID-19, those admitted for lingering COVID-19 complications, and those transferred from other health units.
Including those categories, 166 COVID-19 patients were in hospital as of its most recent data. That number is stable after more than doubling from the previous week.
