TORONTO – Experts’ negative predictions seem to come true, day after day: “thanks” to the Omicron variant, Ontario recorded over 4,000 new cases of Covid-19 today, the highest daily total in almost eight months. Provincial health officials have indeed detected 4,177 new infections, up from 3,301 on Saturday and 1,476 just a week ago. Today’s tally is the highest in the province since last April 23, when 4,505 new infections were reported. The seven-day moving average of daily cases is now word at 2,542: a week ago it was at 1,236.

According to the Ontario scientific table, Omicron has a doubling time of 2.8 days and the surge in infections would be attributable to the new variant. The positivity rate is also very high: with 51,151 tests processed in the last 24 hours and 4,177 cases detected, the percentage is now at 8.7%.

Regarding the distribution of today’s cases, the public units with the highest number of infections are those of Toronto (2,039), York region (365), Ottawa (334), Peel region (311), Halton region ( 245) and Durham region (240).

According to data from the Ministry of Health, 905 of today’s cases involved unvaccinated people, 142 partially vaccinated people, 2,977 fully vaccinated people and 153 people with unknown vaccination status. The rapid spread of the more infectious variant of Omicron, which is believed to represent about 80% of all new now from Covid-19 in Ontario, has therefore led to an explosive growth of cases in the last week even among people completely vaccinated.

However, while the case count has increased dramatically, there has not yet been a spike in ICU admissions. In fact, there are currently “only” 159 Covid-19 patients receiving intensive care treatment: one more than last Sunday. But experts have already announced that intensive care employment could reach “unsustainable levels” in the near future without “timely intervention”. Intervention that the provincial government has undertaken by deciding new rules and launching the vaccination campaign for the third dose (among a thousand problems, first the “waiting list” for the booster). In the meantime, about 86% of residents aged five years or older received at least one dose of the vaccine, 80% received two, and approximately 1.7 million people received the third dose.

The number of active and known cases in Ontario now stands at 20,847, nearly double the number a week ago. In the last 24 hours, another 2 deaths related to the virus have also been confirmed, bringing the total of Ontario, since the beginning of the pandemic, to 10,113.

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