COVID-19 indicators continue to show a decrease in transmission in Quebec, with authorities reporting 1,070 new cases of infection and 12 additional deaths from the virus on Saturday.
Posted at 2:25 p.m.
These 1,070 new cases bring the total number of people who have been affected by the disease since the start of the pandemic to 1,155,131, a strong figure – probably underestimated due to the restrictions still imposed on access to PCR screening.
There have been 16,036 deaths associated with COVID-19 so far. As of Thursday, the province had passed the symbolic milestone of 16,000 deaths attributable to the virus.
No data on the number of hospitalizations was available on Saturday, as these figures have not been published on weekends for a few weeks now. On Friday, Quebec had nevertheless reported a drop of 27 hospitalizations.
The 2,109 people who were hospitalized at that time represented a stable one-week trend. In intensive care, the 57 patients represented at that time a drop of 16% over one week. The number of people in hospital is expected to continue to decline over the next few days, with discharges outpacing admissions.
Note that vaccination data is also no longer available on weekends. However, we know that the vaccination campaign has been slowing down for the past dozen days. Quebec administers an average of 8,500 doses per day, down 10% over one week. This decrease is mainly attributable to the number of people coming to pick up their booster dose which is rapidly decreasing. And conversely, very few toddlers come to be vaccinated, a little less than 500 each day.
As of Friday, 83.7% of Quebecers had received two doses, but only 53.0% three and 17.4% four. As for toddlers, eligible for vaccination for ten days, only 1.3% of them have been vaccinated so far.
Earlier on Thursday, the national director of public health, the Dr Luc Boileau, had confirmed that the seventh wave is not behind us yet, but that the situation is improving, the indicators being more and more encouraging. Public Health, however, says it fears a rise in cases in the fall. A new vaccination campaign against COVID-19 will also be organized in the coming weeks.
“We estimate that within a week or two, we will be able to model what should happen during the fall, but we estimate that there will certainly be an increase in cases again”, explained then. Mr Boileau.
He also specified that the number of monkeypox infections continues to rise gradually in Quebec. Vaccination against monkey pox is now extended to all men who have sex with men across Quebec.