While sewage monitoring data are increasingly suggesting that Community transmission may have increased to around 100,000 new cases per day, hospitalizations are seen as an indicator of backwardness and could continue to increase in the short term.
The latest figures released by the Ministry of Health on Monday suggest that there are now at least 1,301 people being treated for COVID-19, up about 19% from this period last week.
This includes 202 people in intensive care units, almost half of whom breathe with ventilators (91).
It is the highest number of people in the ICU with COVID-19 since March 16.
It should be noted that hospitalization data are likely to be understated, as some hospitals usually do not report weekend occupancy numbers.
The Ontario Scientific Advisory Board has said it expects hospitalizations to continue to increase until May.  They say that according to their most likely scenario, the number of people being treated in hospital with COVID-19 will peak at around 3,000, including about 500 in the ICU.  In January, there were more than 4,000 people with COVID-19 in Ontario hospitals.  The number of people in the ICU with COVID peaked at 626 on 18 January.
“If you look at wastewater monitoring, it shows very early, early signs that (transmission) is either declining or declining in many parts of the province.  This is obviously a very positive sign.  “But you want to see this trend continue before you make sure we are working to get out of this tide,” said infectious disease specialist Dr.  Isaac Bogoch.  “I think we always have to be careful, you can not have a single ton of confidence in the COVID era about how things are going.  “But at least there are some very early signs that things are starting to improve in Ontario.”
Hospital admissions have been on the rise for weeks, but they are not growing at the same rate as the province saw during the fifth wave last winter.
In early January, when there were 266 people in intensive care with COVID-19, Ontario suspended optional surgeries and procedures for about three weeks in an effort to conserve health care resources.
However, the Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr.  Kieran Moore has suggested that he believes hospitals will have the resources to manage the increase in patient volume during this wave.
“Hospital admissions have risen significantly from a few weeks ago, but they are not at all close to where they were in January and February,” Bogoch told CP24 on Monday.
Three pure new deaths
Ontario also added three more net deaths to its account in the past two days after it did not release any data on Easter Sunday.  The total death toll since the start of the pandemic is now 12,632.
Meanwhile, the number of new cases confirmed by PCR in the last 48 hours was 4,669, up from 5,882 in the same period last week.
Positiveness rates remain high with more than 19 percent of all samples showing positives in the last 48 hours.
There continues to be an increase in cases in at least some of the settings that have access to government-funded PCR tests.
According to the latest figures, there are now 182 active cases in long-term care homes and 137 active cases in nursing homes, compared to 137 and 103 cases this week last week.
The number of cases in hospitals is also slightly higher compared to the week (79 vs. 74).
The numbers used in this story are in the Ontario Department of Health’s Daily Epidemiological Summary COVID-19.  The number of cases for any city or region may differ slightly from that reported by the province, as local units report data at different times.