Quebec confirms 163 more coronavirus deaths as cases eclipse 28,600

The Quebec government revealed that the province’s COVID-19-related death toll has reached 2,022 after announcing 163 more deaths since Thursday afternoon.

As part of Quebec’s daily briefings, the province’s director of public health Dr. Horacio Arruda announced that the spike in deaths weren’t all from the past 24 hours.

“Don’t get alarmed,” he said in French, “these are not only deaths that took place yesterday but ones that went back to April that were announced as COVID-related in the past day.”

Quebec now has 28,648 known cases and 1,716 hospitalized patients. 190,719 cases have turned up negative throughout the province.

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Arruda said that 85 deaths per day has “been the plateau.” According to him, the numbers are “not going down and not increasing.”

Arruda added that Quebec is currently performing 6,000 tests a day (some of which are citizens being tested twice to see if they’ve become negative).

“We are going to increase the number of tests by a lot, with the objective of doing 14,000 a day by the end of next week.”

On Thursday, Premier François Legault said total death toll numbers are “difficult to predict,” but added officials have predicted “many more” deaths in the coming weeks.

#COVID19 – Au Québec, en date du 1er mai 2020 à 13 h, la situation est la suivante :
28 648 cas confirmés
190 719 analyses négatives (cas infirmés)
1 716 personnes hospitalisées
2 022 décès

Pour en savoir plus sur la situation au Québec : https://t.co/fiqW5E4y8R

— Santé Québec (@sante_qc) May 1, 2020

Canada’s coronavirus death toll now totals 3,224.