Quebec COVID-19 hospitalizations jump by 41

Quebec reported a stark jump in COVID-19 hospitalizations on Tuesday with a net increase of 41 patients reported for a total of 1,043.

It is the second day in a row hospitalization numbers have increased since they dropped below 1,000 on March 18.

The Ministry of Health said the hospitalization increase may be due to several factors and that the Monday report always shows an increase.

The daily numbers reflect cases from the day before.

"Without going into technical details, this is simply a catch-up of data from the weekend," the ministry told CTV News.

The ministry's main theory is that the majority of hospitals only enter departures on weekends to limit workload, and they finalize data entry on Monday (for Tuesday's daily update).

The ministry said it did, however, expect daily cases and hospitalizations to increase with public health measures being lifted in recent days.

"That's a direct effect of the relaxing [of health measures], we knew that was going to happen and that's why public health experts remain cautious and vigilant," a spokesperson for the ministry said. 

The ministry reported that 100 new patients checked into hospitals for treatment and 59 were discharged.

Of the new patients, 57 were triple vaccinated, 16 double-vaccinated, and 14 were unvaccinated. One patient received one dose of vaccine before checking in, six had unknown vaccination status and six were under five years old and ineligible to receive a vaccine dose.

The ministry says 4,164,585 people are triple-vaccinated in the province, 2,462,748 are double-vaccinated, 708,002 are unvaccinated and 176,810 have received one dose of COVID-19 vaccine. In addition, 660,878 are between five and 11 years old and are considered fully vaccinated and 404,934 are under five.

Intensive care ward numbers decreased by two for a total of 46 patients.

The province added seven new deaths due to the novel coronavirus for a total of 14,272.

NEW CASES

Of 10,762 PCR tests provincial health-care professionals analyzed, 1,383 came back positive for COVID-19 for a positivity rate of 11.3 per cent.

There have now been 946,889 positive PCR tests reported in Quebec since the start of the pandemic.

There were 631 new positive self-declared rapid tests, bringing that total to 90,574.

The ministry is monitoring 365 active COVID-19 outbreaks and 13,325 active cases.

On March 20, a total of 11,778 samples were analyzed.

VACCINATION CAMPAIGN

Quebec health-care professionals administered 3,880 more doses of vaccine, including 3,804 in the past 24 hours.

Since the campaign began, 18,575,295 doses of vaccine have been administered, and 311,814 were administered to Quebecers out of province. 

 

COVID-19 CASES IN QUEBEC
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