Ontario has officially switched to weekly COVID-19 data reports, after more than two years of daily updates.
The latest daily data came on Thursday. The change means that for data specifically, CBC News will also go on to publish weekly stories. The Ministry of Health says its databases will be updated on Thursdays at 2 p.m.
Providing a clear and complete picture of the state of COVID-19 in Ontario has become increasingly difficult in recent months, after the province restricted laboratory testing and stopped publicly providing school-related data.
On Thursday, there were 491 people with COVID-19 in hospitals. That’s less than 536 at the same time last week.
Of these patients, 109 were being treated in intensive care. Approximately 55% of people in the ICU were admitted due to symptoms of the disease, while 45% were already in critical care when they tested positive for the virus.
Over the past seven days, another 33 Ontarians with COVID-19 have died. The official death toll in the province is 13,357.
According to the Ontario scientific advisory board COVID-19, the signal of the virus in the garbage has been steadily increasing since the end of May. The last confirmed data point arrived on June 10, and although an extrapolation suggests that the signal will continue to increase, these projections, however, are based on incomplete data.
An increase in the wastewater signal has predicted all waves of the virus. For now, however, the rate of increase appears to be slower than previous waves caused by the Omicron variant.