Quebec's health ministry is reporting another drop in COVID-19 hospitalizations Monday with 11 fewer people receiving care and four fewer people being treated in the intensive care unit.
Hospitalizations were down to 1,611 and ICU cases dropped to 51, the ministry said.
The province is also recording five new deaths related to the coronavirus, for a total of 15,284 deaths.
Another indicator points to an improving COVID-19 situation in the province: the health ministry reported 5,331 health-care workers were absent for reasons related to the virus (such as self-isolation after testing positive or awaiting test results). Seven days ago, there were 6,357 health workers reported absent.
On Saturday, Quebec became the last province in Canada to lift its face mask mandate for most indoor locations.
The province also recorded 457 people have tested positive in the last 24 hours through PCR testing, which is still reserved for high-priority groups. An additional 139 positive cases were identified through rapid antigen testing.
The positivity rate is down to 6.7 per cent and the province is monitoring 643 active outbreaks. Meanwhile, there are 11,849 active cases province-wide, which is down by more than 2,000 cases from May 13.
Health-care workers analyzed 9,529 samples on May 14.
VACCINATION UPDATE
Another 5,243 vaccine doses were administered in the last 24 hours, for a total of 19,773,206 shots given out in Quebec. An additional 331,213 doses have been given out to Quebecers outside of the province.
Most of the new shots administered in the previous day (3,887 shots) were for fourth doses, also known as "second booster shots."
So far, health-care workers have administered 7,435,318 first doses covering 91 per cent of the eligible population, 4,453,600 third doses covering 55 per cent of the population, and 1,016,947 fourth doses covering 12 per cent of the population.
The Ministry of Health no longer provides data on second doses in its daily COVID-19 update.
