Ottawa, Dec 1 (IANS): As November nears its end, Canada reported a total of 374,051 Covid-19 cases and 12,076 deaths as of Monday afternoon, according to CTV.

Canada has been well into the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic and new case numbers grow by thousands each day.

The number of new cases reported daily across the country has increased by more than 2,000 since the beginning of November and is closing in on 6,000 daily, Xinhua reported.

The country is on track to have 4,000 coronavirus patients in hospital by Christmas, a figure that would eclipse the peak of the first wave and put tremendous pressure on a health-care system already pushed to the brink by nine months of battling the pandemic.

A new analysis conducted for The Globe and Mail by researchers at British Columbia's Simon Fraser University projects that the number of Canadians admitted to hospital for treatment of Covid-19 will continue to grow, with the steepest increases in the West, particularly in Alberta province

If Alberta stays on its current trajectory, the province's physicians and nurses will be caring for more Covid-19 patients than Ontario, which has three times the population.

There were 435 Covid-19 patients in Alberta hospitals on Sunday.

Over the past week, there has been an average of just over 2,000 Covid-19 patients being treated in Canadian hospitals, 420 of them in critical-care units, according to a Globe and Mail tally of provincial data. Both figures have nearly doubled since the end of October.

The Canadian government announced on Sunday to extend a series of travel restrictions and rules meant to stem the Covid-19 spread into the new year as case counts continue their steady rise across the country.