COVID-19 across Canada surpassed 10,000 patients for the first time Monday, an alarming sign of the impact the highly-transmissible Omicron variant has had on the country’s health-care system.A Global News analysis of provincial health data shows there are now 10,038 patients receiving care in hospital.
Of those, 1,148 people are in intensive care units.The country first broke its hospitalization record on Jan. 5, when the number of patients surpassed 5,000.
That number has nearly doubled in just under two weeks, as several provinces break their own records and others come close to doing so.Much of the current hospitalizations are being driven by Ontario and Quebec.
Ontario reported 578 COVID-19 patients in intensive care units and 3,887 in hospital overall, up from 3,595 a day before. Quebec, meanwhile, reported a new record of 3,381 hospitalized COVID-19 patients, including 286 in ICUs.Yet there have also been surges in other parts of the country.