OTTAWA, Oct. 15 (Xinhua) -- Canada's seven-day average of 3,168 new cases reported daily on Oct. 8-14 is a decrease of 15 percent over the previous week, the Public Health Agency of Canada said Friday.
On Friday, Canada reported 1,688 new cases of COVID-19, raising the cumulative total to 1,675,117 cases, including 28,439 deaths, according to CTV.
While the decline in national daily case counts is encouraging, there is still considerable regional variation, with some areas in the country continuing to experience challenges where the virus is surging.
"Unfortunately, hospitalization and critical care admission trends, primarily involving unvaccinated people, are still elevated nationally," said Theresa Tam, chief public health officer of Canada, in a statement.
Together with prolonged hospital stays this continues to place a heavy strain on local healthcare resources, particularly where infection rates are high and vaccination rates are low, Tam said.
The latest data show that an average of 2,509 people with COVID-19 were being treated in Canadian hospitals each day on Oct. 8-14. This includes, on average, 757 people who were being treated in intensive care units (ICU), and an average of 40 deaths were reported daily on Oct. 8-14.
The highly contagious Delta variant accounts for the majority of recently reported cases in the country and most reported cases, hospitalizations and deaths are occurring among unvaccinated people.
As of Oct. 14, Canada has administered over 57 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, with the latest data indicating that over 88 percent of people aged 12 years or older have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine and over 82 percent are now fully vaccinated. Enditem
