OTTAWA – New federal government modeling suggests that daily hospitalizations will increase in the coming weeks, due to extremely high levels of transmission of the Omicron variant of COVID-19.
Although the rate of people hospitalized with Omicron is lower than that of the Delta variant, forecasts show that new daily hospitalizations will far exceed previous historical peaks due to the large number of cases.
Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam released the new modeling on Friday, which suggests the current wave of COVID-19 driven by the Omicron variant will peak this month with between 170,000 and 300,000 actual daily cases.
The current national case tally shows around 37,500 new cases being reported daily, but these are grossly underestimated as many parts of the country no longer provide lab tests to the majority of the population.
Around 28% of lab tests performed are positive, meaning more than one in four tests show positive results for the virus.
Dr. Tam says the high positivity rate shows that COVID-19 is widespread and the number of cases greatly underestimates the true burden of infection in the general population.
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