COVID-19: Quebec enters 6th wave as hospitalizations climb to 1,200

Quebec confirmed Wednesday the province is now dealing with a sixth wave of COVID-19 fuelled by the BA.2 Omicron subvariant.

Public Health officials are urging Quebecers to remain cautious and are monitoring the situation.

In a social media post Wednesday evening, the health ministry said it isn’t planning on adding any new measures.

News of a sixth wave comes as the province recorded eight new deaths related to COVID-19 on Wednesday, amid a jump in  hospitalizations,

The number of hospitalizations rounded out at 1,200, a rise of 47. This comes after 148 patients were admitted, while 101 left in the last day.

Officials say 60 people were being treated for the disease in intensive care units, a drop of three.

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The province’s daily tally included 3,067 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus, though this isn’t representative of the situation since PCR testing is only open to select groups.

On that note, 20,475 tests were administered at government-run screening sites on Monday.

Quebecers continued to register the results of their rapid tests, adding 1,560 in the latest update. Of those tests, 1,334 were positive for the virus.

The immunization campaign issued another 8,849 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine the past 24 hours. So far, more than 18.6 million shots have been administered.

Quebec has reported a total of 964,450 official infections since the start of the pandemic. The health crisis has killed 14,353 people to date.

Recoveries from the virus, meanwhile, topped 928,000.

The government also announced that certain pandemic-related bonuses for health-care staff will be extended by one month, until mid-May, because of the rising number of infections and hospitalizations linked to the disease.

— with files from The Canadian Press and Global News’ Annabelle Olivier