MONTREAL -- Quebec health authorities reported 1,564 new cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, with 14,853 active cases.
There were also 36 new deaths linked to the disease, for a total of 7,313 since the pandemic began. Twelve of those deaths happened in the last 24 hours, while 22 took place between Dec. 1 and 6 and two were prior to Dec. 1.
The seven-day rolling average of new cases now stands at 1,509, which is slightly down from yesterday.
Hospitalizations, a metric the province has been watching closely, continued to rise, with 17 new people admitted to hospital with the virus.
However, that's a significantly smaller increase than many of the new daily hospitalizations recorded over the last week -- as of Friday, the seven-day average in hospitalizations was 49 people per day.
The total number of COVID-19 patients hospitalized now stands at 835. Of them, 114 are in the intensive care unit, an increase of nine.
The new numbers bring the total count of people infected in the province since the start of the pandemic to 154,740.
Among the regions, Montreal recorded the biggest single-day increase at 492 new cases. However, that's roughly on par or slightly down from numbers the city has reported over the last week.
Two regions that have showed more consistent increases over the last week are Laval and Monteregie, which recorded their highest numbers of the week at 171 and 277 new cases, respectively.
On Sunday, the province analyzed 23,885 tests (that data is only reported two days later). The positivity rate of those tests was 6.3 per cent.
In total, Quebec continues to have Canada's highest rate of confirmed cases per capita at 1,812 confirmed cases per 100,000 population. The second highest is Alberta at 1,608, and the Canadian average stands at 1,121. The numbers provided by Quebec public health authorities only include provinces, not territories.
In terms of recent comparisons, however, Quebec isn't doing as badly -- it has less than half of Alberta's average new case count, per capita, over the last two weeks, and is also well below Manitoba's and Saskatchewan's rates.
When it comes to deaths per capita, Quebec is currently second highest in the country right now at five deaths per 100,000 people, averaged over the last two weeks. Manitoba is by far the hardest-hit province on that measure, with an average of 12 deaths per 100,000 people.
