Key COVID-19 numbers in the Ottawa area today
CBC News | Posted: April 8, 2022 4:57 PM | Last Updated: April 8, 2022
Outbreak total and test positivity rate both rise, while hospitalizations remain stable
- Ottawa's hospitalizations are stable, test positivity and outbreak number rise.
- No wastewater update yet for Ottawa.
- Someone with COVID-19 has died in Hastings Prince Edward.
Today's Ottawa update
Nineteen Ottawa residents are in local hospitals for treatment of active COVID-19 according to Friday's OPH update. That number has been around 20 for most of the week, which is about double the total for the previous weeks.
None of the patients are in intensive care.
Hospitalization figures don't include patients admitted for other reasons who then tested positive for COVID-19. Nor do they include those admitted for lingering COVID-19 complications, nor patients transferred from other health units.
That number has also been rising.
Testing strategies have changed under the contagious Omicron variant, which means many new COVID-19 cases aren't reflected in current counts. Public health only tracks and reports outbreaks that occur in health-care settings.
At 20 per cent, the average positivity rate for those who received PCR tests outside long-term care homes is slowly rising. The average in these homes rises to around six per cent.
On Friday, OPH reported 247 more COVID-19 cases and no more deaths.
The health unit also reported an increase to 35 health-care outbreaks from the 29 reported Thursday, which had been at 23 one week ago.
The rolling weekly incidence rate of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases, expressed per 100,000 residents, remains around 120.
The average level of coronavirus detected in Ottawa's wastewater was at another record high with the latest update (the bold red line in the graph below). Data has not been updated by early Friday afternoon.
The most recent daily reading on Tuesday (the bars in the graph) was its highest ever and much higher than levels measured in the first Omicron wave in January and last spring's Alpha-driven wave.
Those records don't reflect the first wave of the pandemic when wastewater was not monitored for traces of the virus.
Wastewater is a key indicator of what Ottawa Public Health (OPH) calls a concerning resurgence of COVID-19 in the city. Health officials in the Ottawa area highly recommend people take steps to protect themselves and others.
As of Monday's weekly update, 92 per cent of eligible Ottawa residents have at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose, 88 per cent have at least two, and 62 per cent of residents age 12 and up have at least three.
Across the region
Quebec's institute of public health and the head of the Ontario Science Advisory Table say their provinces are in the midst of another pandemic wave. Both say hospitalizations may not get as high this wave because of immunity from vaccines and previous infection.
Communities outside Ottawa are reporting about 45 COVID-19 hospitalizations, and about 10 of them are in intensive care.
Neither of those numbers includes Hastings Prince Edward Public Health, which reported its 50th COVID death Friday along with 16 hospitalizations — a number that is slowly dropping. This health unit has a different method of counting patients.
Hospitalizations are relatively low and stable in Leeds, Grenville and Lanark (LGL) counties
Eastern Ontario has one of the highest regional wastewater averages among the science table's data.
Recent wastewater data from the Kingston area include some of the highest readings of 2022. The wastewater signal is rising or stable across LGL.