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1) Although #COVID19 hospitalizations continued to decline in Montreal and across the province on Thursday, outbreaks ramped up across different sectors, a sign that transmission of the highly contagious #coronavirus remains a big problem even during the curfew.
2) Workplace outbreaks jumped by 33 to 651, with evidence that many are occurring in manufacturing, a sector Premier François Legault has been wary of closing, as he did during last spring’s successful shutdown. Clusters rose by four to 75 in daycares, the 6th daily increase.
3) Outbreaks in schools climbed by eight to 43. The Quebec Education Ministry reported that the number of active cases among students and staff increased by 32 to 1,936. Schools also shuttered 84 more classrooms because of #COVID19 exposure. Please see the chart below.
4) Furthermore, Montreal posted 679 #COVID19 cases Thursday, up from 629, amid a hike in testing. That’s still far below the record of 1,531 on Jan. 8. Nonetheless, the city’s seven-day rolling average remains high at 34.41 cases per 100,000 residents.
5) Drilling down into the neighborhood level, transmission is more than 17 times as elevated in the health district of Saint-Léonard-Saint-Michel, where the rate stands at 588.2 #COVID19 cases per 100,000 residents. The chart below shows problem spots across the city.
6) The relatively good news is that #COVID19 hospitalizations dropped by 14 to 1,453 across the province, although ICU stays were stuck at 216. Montreal recorded 696 hospitalizations on Wednesday, down by four from the previous day.
7) Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital declared 117 #COVID19 hospitalizations, by far the highest in the city. It’s likely receiving patients from the Saint-Léonard and other hot spots in the east end. In the west end, the Jewish General has 85 patients hospitalized. Please see below.
8) The Premier on Thursday emphasized that he won’t lift the curfew until #COVID19 hospitalizations trend downward definitively. And on Thursday morning, they inched up by nine to 59 at the McGill University Health Centre. Please refer to the chart underneath.
9) As I wrote in my previous thread, Montreal is at a confounding point in the #pandemic, with hospitalizations down from a high of 1,523 on Jan. 13, but transmission widespread in some Montreal neighborhoods and a slight presence of the super transmissible B1.1.7 strain here.
