COVID-19 hospitalizations in Ontario were 31 percent higher in 2022 than in 2021, while deaths from the disease were 39 percent higher than the previous year, according to a new report from Public Health Ontario.
The newly-released data said there were a total of 22,559 COVID-19 hospitalizations in Ontario in 2021, and 29,524 hospitalizations from the disease in 2022. Additionally, there were 5,485 deaths from COVID-19 in 2021, and 7,625 COVID-19 deaths in 2022.
The report said that the difference in hospitalizations and deaths between 2021 and 2022 was impacted by differences in circulating SARS-CoV-2 variant characteristics—such as transmissibility and immune evasion—as well as different public health measures, population immunity, COVID-19 vaccine uptake, and COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness against variants….