Ontario reports 1,275 new COVID cases, zero new deaths

COVID-19 has been the cause of, or a factor in, the death of 12,842 people in Ontario since March 2020, according to the province's daily reporting.

Ontario is not reporting any COVID-related deaths in the latest update, but there is a delay between when a person dies of COVID and when it is included in the daily reports. In the last 30 days, 304 people have died because of COVID, with between four and 19 deaths per day.

The daily update included 1,275 lab-confirmed COVID cases. Case counts are assumed to be underestimated because of limited PCR testing and only PCR results are included in the daily case counts.

Since the start of the pandemic, Public Health Ontario has confirmed 1,261,655 cases of COVID-19 and reported 1,219,640 cases recovered or resolved.

The May 2 updates provided by the province's public health agency and the ministry of health also reported the following data:

Hospitalizations

• Of the 1,423 people hospitalized with COVID, about half were admitted because of COVID-19 related illness and the other half were admitted for other reasons but test positive for COVID-19. 
• 211 patients are in intensive care units with COVID-related illnesses, including 90 patients on ventilators. 
• Hospitalization data is underestimated on Sunday and Monday as more than 10 per cent of Ontario hospitals do not report bed census data. Vaccination status for hospitalized patients is also unavailable. 

Vaccination

• About 86 per cent of the population over four years old in Ontario has two or more doses of COVID vaccine (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 13,492 tests, resulting in a 14.7 per cent positivity.

Northern Ontario

In the north, there are 137 hospitalizations, up from 130 yesterday, according to provincial data. There are 25 people in ICU with the virus, up from 21 yesterday, and 8 people on ventilators, which is the same as yesterday.

Not all health units update their websites over the weekend and the data for Northern Ontario is not up-to-date yet.