Province reports 1,486 COVID-positive patients in hospital, 206 in ICU

There are at least 1,486 COVID-positive people currently hospitalized with about 45 per cent of them admitted for COVID-related illness, according to the latest Ontario update. 

Of those, 206 COVID patients are in intensive care unit beds and 87 are on a ventilator with COVID-related illness.

The province also reported one more COVID-related death that occurred within the last month.

According to the latest update, there have been 199 COVID deaths in the last 30 days, with between five and 16 deaths each day. 

Over the course of the pandemic, the province has reported 12,633 deaths that were either caused by COVID, COVID was a contributing factor to the death, or the cause of death was unknown or missing. 

The daily update included 1,218 lab-confirmed COVID cases, but technical glitches may have caused this number to be lower than the actual test results. 

Case counts are assumed to be underestimated because not everyone is eligible to receive PCR testing and only PCR results are included in the daily case counts.

Since the start of the pandemic, Public Health Ontario has confirmed 1,223,461 cases of COVID-19 and reported 1,176,875 cases recovered or resolved.

The April 19 updates provided by the province's public health agency and the ministry of health also reported the following data:

Hospitalizations

• 1,486 COVID-positive patients in hospitals, up from 1,301 reported yesterday. Of those, 45 per cent were hospitalized because of COVID-19 and 55 per cent were hospitalized for other reasons but test positive for COVID-19. 
• According to today's report, the hospitalization totals are underestimated as more than 10 per cent of Ontario's hospitals did not submit data to the daily bed census. 
• Among those hospitalized but not in the ICU are 193 unvaccinated people, 65 partially vaccinated people, and 954 fully vaccinated people. 
• 206 people are in ICU because of COVID-related critical illness, which is up from 202 reported yesterday. Of those, 31 no longer test positive for COVID-19.
• There are 87 patients on ventilators because of COVID-related critical illness, down from 91 reported yesterday.
• Among the COVID patients in the ICU are 31 unvaccinated people, two partially vaccinated people, and 83 fully vaccinated people. 

Vaccination

• About 86 per cent of the population over four years old in Ontario is fully vaccinated (about 12.1 million people)
• More than 7.2 million people in Ontario have had three doses of a COVID vaccine.
• 10 per cent of the eligible population (aged 5 and up) is unvaccinated

Testing 

• Ontario labs processed 15,322 tests for the latest report, resulting in a 17.9 per cent positivity.

Northern Ontario 

In the north, there are 135 hospitalizations, up from 124 yesterday, according to provincial data. There are 18 people in ICU with the virus, up from 17 yesterday, and 3 people on ventilators, which is the same as yesterday.

Because of the Easter long weekend, not all of the health units have updated their numbers and the data for Northern Ontario is not up-to-date yet.