21 COVID-19 deaths reported in Ontario over the last week

Ontario officials have confirmed 21 new COVID-19 deaths over the last week while hospitalizations related to the disease continue to slowly drop.

Provincial data about COVID-19 is now released weekly in Ontario every Thursday at 2 p.m.

The most recent data shows 486 people are being treated with COVID-19 in Ontario hospitals. This represents a slight dip from the 491 patients in hospital reported a week before.

Of those in hospital, about 43 per cent are being treated specifically for COVID-19 while the rest of the patients tested positive after admission.

There are 96 people in intensive care with COVID-19 as of June 23 and the province says that about 61 per cent were admitted due to the novel coronavirus.

A week ago there were 109 COVID-19 patients in ICU.

In the last seven days, the province has confirmed an additional 21 deaths related to COVID-19, bringing the total death tally in the province to 13,378.

Just over 61,000 COVID-19 tests were administered in the last week, leading to an average positivity rate of about 7.6 per cent.

The seven-day average from the week before was about 6.9 per cent.

The vast majority of Ontarians are not eligible for COVID-19 testing and the results of rapid antigen tests performed at home are not tracked.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, there have been 1,319,977 lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the province.