COVID-19: Ottawa sees 18 new cases; Ontario still missing vaccination targets to exit Step 3 – Ottawa Citizen

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Ottawa Public Health reported 18 new confirmed cases and no new deaths on Friday, an increase of seven from the 11 new cases reported Thursday.

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There are 65 active cases in the city, OPH said.

Three people are currently Ottawa hospitals and one in ICU.

In total, there have been 27,850 confirmed cases and 593 deaths.

There remains one outbreak in a day centre involving two children.

So far, 9,174 cases in Ottawa were infected with a variant of concern, leading to 101 deaths.

In the past 30 days, 43 per cent of all reported cases were a variant of concern, and 59 cases, about one per cent of all cases, were identified as the Delta variant.

As of Friday, Ottawa Public Health has administered 802,972 first doses of vaccine, and 662,918 second doses for a total of 1,465,890, according to the agency’s vaccination dashboard.

The means 74 per cent of adults are fully vaccinated. The rate for recipients over the age of 12 is 73 per cent. The rate of full vaccinations for the entire population, including children under 12 who are not yet eligible, is 64 per cent.

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About 83 per cent of residents have received at least one dose.

Latest COVID-19 news in Ontario

Ontario marked three weeks on Friday since entering the third step of its pandemic reopening plan but it has yet to hit the vaccination targets set for restrictions to roll back further.

The province previously progressed through earlier phases of its reopening within 21 days, but the government has established three firm thresholds that must be met before nearly all public health measures drop away.

Eighty per cent of all Ontarians aged 12 and older must have at least one shot, 75 per cent need to be fully immunized and all public health units must have fully vaccinated 70 per cent of eligible residents before the province can move on from Step 3.

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The first condition is the only one that has been met so far.

As of Friday, 72 per cent of adults had been fully immunized, and only about half of Ontario’s 34 health units had met the third condition.

Leeds, Grenville and Lanark reported the highest inoculation rate, with 79 per cent of residents 12 and older fully vaccinated,

The top doctor for the area, Dr. Paula Stewart, said the local vaccination program has been “a broad community effort,” with four fixed clinics, mobile teams in smaller towns, paramedic outreach to homebound residents and involvement across health-care providers.

Ontario has reported 340 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 18 new deaths on Friday, an increase from the 213 cases reported on Thursday.

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Sixteen of the 18 deaths were related to cases from more than six weeks ago, which were reported based on data cleaning, Public Health Ontario said on Friday morning.

The new deaths included one person under the age of 19.

Of the new confirmed cases reported in Ontario on Friday, 92 were people under the age of 19 and 156 were people between the ages of 20 and 39.

In the under-19 age group, 23 new confirmed cases were reported among children four to eight years of age; 20 cases were reported among those nine to 13 years old and 15 cases in the 14 to 17 age group. All of these numbers have increased since Thursday.

Two new deaths were also reported among long-term care residents on Friday, bringing the total number of resident deaths to 3,985.

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Across the province, there are 113 people currently in hospital due to COVID-19. There are 110 people in ICU, an increase of two. There are 77 people on ventilators.

In all, there have been 9,392 deaths in Ontario so far in the pandemic, with 551,678 confirmed cases.

According to Public Health Ontario, from the end of June to the end of July, unvaccinated people were eight times more likely to become infected with COVID-19 than fully vaccinated people.

As of 8 p.m. on Thursday, 19,764,199 doses of vaccine had been administered across Ontario, including 53,975 doses administered Thursday, Health Minister Christine Elliot tweeted on Friday.

Latest COVID-19 news from Quebec

Quebec is reporting 218 new cases of COVID-19 today and one more death attributed to the novel coronavirus, which occurred on Aug. 3. It’s the first death linked to the virus since July 22.

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Quebec’s public health institute says 84.4 per cent of residents 12 and older have received at least one dose of vaccine and 70.3 per cent are considered adequately vaccinated. It says 89.9 per cent of health-care workers had received one dose as of Aug. 4 and 80.4 per cent were adequately vaccinated.

The Health Department says the number of COVID-19-related hospitalizations dropped by three from Thursday, to 57, and 15 people were in intensive care, a drop of one.

-With files from The Canadian Press