Key COVID-19 numbers in the Ottawa area today

• Ottawa's COVID-19 trends are showing signs of improvement.

• One more COVID death has been reported in the capital.

• Some 15,000 vaccine doses were administered, the highest one-week tally this spring.

• Hospitalizations and wastewater levels in Leeds-Grenville-Lanark's remain stable.

Today's Ottawa update

Wastewater

The level of coronavirus detected in Ottawa's wastewater has been declining slowly for about a month since it peaked in April.

Still, the most recent data available (the bold red line in the graph below) show the seven-day average calculated on May 11 remained about four higher than in early March, before the current spike.

Levels have now dropped below previous peaks in October 2020 and January 2022.

Hospitals

Seventeen Ottawa residents are in local hospitals to be treated for COVID-19, according to Monday's Ottawa Public Health (OPH) update. That number has dropped below 20 for the first time in about a month. None of those patients is in intensive care.

The hospitalization figures above don't include all patients. For example, they leave out patients admitted for other reasons who then test positive for COVID-19, those admitted for lingering COVID-19 complications, and those transferred from other health units.

When those categories are included, there were 75 patients on Saturday, similar to the number seen in mid-April.

Tests, outbreaks and cases

Testing strategies have changed under the contagious Omicron variant, which means many new COVID-19 cases aren't reflected in current counts. Public health only tracks and reports outbreaks that occur in health-care settings.

At 11 per cent, Ottawa's average positivity rate for those who received PCR tests outside long-term care homes is dropping, but very slowly. The average inside the homes isn't available.

Ottawa has 33 active COVID outbreaks Monday. That number has been slowly dropping for about three weeks.

On Monday, OPH reported 119 more cases and one more death over three days.

The rolling weekly incidence rate of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases, expressed per 100,000 residents, drops to around 50.

Vaccines

916,525: The number of Ottawa residents age five and up with at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, 340 more than in last Monday's weekly update. That's still 92 per cent of the eligible population.

880,837: The number of Ottawa residents age five and up with a second dose, 543 since the last update. That's still 89 per cent of the eligible population.

573,758: The number of Ottawans age 12 and up with a third dose, 1,158 since the last update. That's still 63 per cent of these residents; younger children only qualify with certain health conditions.

Eight per cent of residents age 12 and up have a fourth dose, or about 74,400 people. That's about 13,000 fourth doses since the last update.

Approximately 15,000 vaccine doses were administered to residents in the last week, the highest weekly number this spring.

Across the region

Wastewater

Ontario and Quebec continue to be in the sixth pandemic wave. There are signs of improvement in both provinces, and Quebec has ended most mask rules.

Wastewater levels in the Kingston area are slowly dropping, and sites in Leeds, Grenville and Lanark (LGL) counties and east of Ottawa are stable. Other areas lack publicly available data.

Eastern Ontario's regional wastewater average is dropping, according to the science table.

Hospitalizations

Western Quebec drops to 65 COVID hospitalizations, including patients who are no longer considered active cases. That number had been in the 70s for most of the last two weeks. One of those patients requires intensive care.

Eastern Ontario communities outside Ottawa are reporting about 45 COVID-19 hospitalizations, including about 10 in intensive care. Neither includes Hastings Prince Edward (HPE) Public Health which, like western Quebec, has a different counting method.

LGL reported six COVID hospital patients, two of them in intensive care.

Vaccines

More than 5.3 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered to people in the Ottawa-Gatineau region.

Quebec considers about 78 per cent of Outaouais residents to be "adequately vaccinated," which can be a combination of vaccination and recent infection.

For each of the eastern Ontario health units, there are anywhere from 81 to 92 per cent of eligible residents with at least two vaccine doses, and anywhere from 59 to 71 per cent of adults with three doses.