Oregon health authorities reported Monday that 18,538 new confirmed or presumptive COVID-19 cases were identified over the weekend.

The state has a positive test rate of just over 22% as the highly contagious omicron variant spreads. The number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 increased to 692, but hospitalizations were still about 40% below their peak during the summer surge of the delta variant.

The number of COVID-19 positive patients on ventilators was dropping until five days ago, the state’s data shows. At that point, the number on ventilators started climbing sharply, from a low of 27 on Jan. 5 to a high of 53 on Jan. 10.

That’s still about a quarter of the number of COVID-19 patients needing a ventilator during the peak of the delta wave last year.

Health officials diagnosed 47,272 coronavirus cases over the past week, three times as many as the previous week.

Eighteen new deaths were announced Monday.

This story was originally published by Oregon Public Broadcasting.