MONTREAL -- Quebec announced Friday that 800 more people have tested positive for COVID-19 in the past 24 hours bringing the overall total number of infections since the start of the pandemic to 280,687.
Of those who tested positive, 261,429 are reported to have recovered, an increase of 1,184.
The seven-day average for daily cases is now 836 cases per day.
The Quebec Institute of Public Health says that there are 8,980 active COVID-19 cases in the province, 398 fewer than on Thursday.
The province also added 14 deaths due to the disease including just one in the past 24 hours, 12 between Feb. 12 and Feb. 17, and one before Feb. 12.
The last time the single-day death count was this low was Sept. 11 when zero new deaths were reported in a 24 hour period.
Since March 2020, 10,278 people are reported to have died due to the novel coronavirus.
Quebec hospitalizations continued to drop with 24 fewer people receiving care in the province's hospitals than there were Thursday for a total of 723 people in hospital. Of those, 127 people are in the intensive care ward, a decrease of two.
Hospitalization numbers are at their lowest since Nov. 30 when the province reported 719.
On Thursday, 9,202 doses of vaccine were administered bringing that total to 311,651, or 3.2 per cent of Quebecers.
Healthcare professionals in the province analyzed 32,491 samples Feb. 17 (Quebec releases its testing data from two days prior to its daily updates).
REGIONAL DATA
Montreal continued to report the highest increase in cases with 353 new (102,872 total) Friday followed by Monteregie (106 new, 40,852 total), Lanaudiere (74 new, 19,812 total), Laval (73 new, 23,904 total) and the Laurentians (71 new, 15,711 total).
In addition to Monteregie, just Outaouais (19 new, 6,106 total), Chaudiere-Appalaches (14 new, 11,626 total), and Mauricie-et-Centre-du-Quebec (15 new, 12,655 total) showed higher increases in case numbers Friday than they did Thursday.
Eight deaths were reported in Montreal (4,467 total), three in Monteregie (1,454 total), two in Quebec City (968 total), and one death was reported in Lanaudiere (487 total).
