Reports issued by Ontario Province today reported two new deaths due to COVID-19, as hospital admissions for treatment surged from their lowest level in five months on Sunday.

The Ministry of Health said the two new deaths occurred within the past thirty days.

The province has recorded 13,072 deaths due to COVID-19 since March 2020.

Meanwhile, there were 159 patients in the hospital intensive care unit due to COVID-19 on Monday, an increase of eight from Sunday’s lowest level for 2022.

There were also 1,122 patients in the hospital due to COVID-19, an increase of nearly 100 from Sunday, but the ministry said the Monday number is likely lower as not all hospitals report data on weekends.

Infectious disease specialist Dr. Isaac Bogoch said on Monday: “There are many factors pushing these numbers down.” “There is seasonal variation to this virus. We are entering a season where we expect less respiratory viral infection. But of course, there are fewer people indoors.”

He said Omicron is not as harmful as previous virus variants, and a large portion of Ontario’s population has been infected in the past four to five months.

“There is a lot of community immunity from vaccination and previous infection.”

In the same context, a study published on Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found that up to nine percent of COVID-19 patients admitted to hospital were readmitted within 30 days of discharge, and two percent died within 30 days of discharge.

The province says 1,061 COVID-19 cases were detected in the past 24 hours, although this figure is considered large because a wide segment of the population is no longer eligible for free PCR testing and rapid antigen test results are typically not documented.

Provincial laboratories processed 8,132 test samples in the preceding period, resulting in a positivity rate of no less than 7.7 percent.

The number of ongoing COVID-19 outbreaks in high-risk settings slightly increased, spreading to 191 of Ontario’s 626 long-term care homes, along with 123 retirement homes and 89 hospitals.

Edited by: Dima Abu Khair