Quebec reports 37 COVID-19 deaths since Thursday, 19 of them in Montreal

Quebec reported on Monday that 37 people had died from COVID -19 since Thursday, in its first daily update after reversing a controversial decision to stop presenting the daily numbers.

The new figures bring the COVID -19 death toll in the province to 5,485.

The number of cases in Quebec reached 55,390 on Monday, with 311 new cases added over the previous four days. The number of hospitalizations stood at 455, down from 478 on Friday.

The province reported seven new deaths on Friday, 17 on Saturday, six on Sunday and seven on Monday.

The island of Montreal, which has been the epicentre of the pandemic since it hit Quebec, had 27,270 confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of Monday. The island had 121 new cases confirmed since Thursday.

Montreal also has had 19 deaths from COVID -19 since the last figures for the island were reported on Thursday, for a total of 3,361.

The so-called hot spot remains Montreal North, where nearly 10 per cent of all confirmed cases on the island are concentrated.

Across Quebec, the most vulnerable group remains those aged 80 and over. Nearly three-quarters of the COVID -19 deaths in the province are among those 80 years and over, and nearly 92 per cent of deaths are among those aged 70 and over.

However, the largest concentration of confirmed cases is among Quebecers aged 40 to 59, accounting for nearly 30 per cent of the confirmed COVID-19 cases in the province.

The new numbers coincided with the release on Monday of the provincial public health department’s latest projections for COVID-19 transmission in the coming months.

Predictably, the public health department’s modelling suggests that if Montrealers maintain physical distancing, the number of hospitalizations and deaths will stabilize or drop. However, if the public lets its guard down and fails to respect physical distancing measures, the number of hospitalizations and deaths could increase in July, with a possible acceleration in August.

About half of the department’s models showed such an increase in the Montreal region if physical distancing isn’t respected, while about half of the models showed the increase would be slight in the regions outside Montreal.

The predictions take into account summer travel between regions of Quebec. However, they don’t take into account possible transmission from travellers from the United States if the Canada-u.s. border reopens over the summer.

Quebec announced early last week that it would stop disclosing COVID -19 infection data daily and switch to weekly reports.

However, newly appointed Health Minister Christian Dubé announced a reversal of the decision on Friday.

Dubé replaced Danielle Mccann as part of a cabinet shuffle by Premier François Legault one week ago.