Ontario reports 1,172 new coronavirus cases, 67 more deaths

Ontario is reporting 1,172 new cases of the coronavirus on Wednesday, bringing the provincial total to 272,097.

The daily case total comes amid the provincial government and Toronto Public Health’s migration and reconciling of data, which has been impacting daily counts for several days.

“On February 1, Toronto Public Health (TPH) migrated COVID-19 data to CCM from their local CORES system,” Wednesday’s report indicated. “As data quality checks and remediation activities continue this week, fluctuations may occur.”

Wednesday’s case count is higher than Tuesday’s, which saw 754 new infections. But officials said the low number was an underestimation due to the data system migration. On Monday, 1,969 new cases were recorded and 1,848 on Sunday.

“Locally, there are 444 new cases in Toronto, 199 in Peel and 110 in York Region,” Health Minister Christine Elliott said in a tweet on Wednesday.

The death toll in the province has risen to 6,305 as 67 more deaths were reported.

Officials have included a section for confirmed variant cases and have listed 106 U.K. variant (B.1.1.7) cases and one South African variant (B.1.351) detected so far in the province.

Meanwhile, 248,981 Ontarians were reported to have recovered from COVID-19, which is about 90 per cent of known cases. Resolved cases increased by 1,745 from the previous day and there were more resolved cases than new cases on Wednesday.

Active cases in Ontario now stand at 16,811 — down from the previous day when it was 17,451, and down from last Wednesday at 21,932.

The seven-day average has now reached 1,675, down from yesterday at 1,746, and down from last week at 2,205 — showing a downward trend in new cases.

Ontario reported 1,066 people hospitalized with COVID-19 (down by 126 from the previous day), with 336 patients in an intensive care unit (down by five) and 254 patients in ICUs on a ventilator (up by one).

The government said 52,418 tests were processed in the last 24 hours. There is currently a backlog of 44,606 tests awaiting results. A total of 9,784,846 tests have been completed since the start of the pandemic.

Test positivity — the percentage of tests that come back positive — for Wednesday was 3.3 per cent, down from Tuesday when it was 4.6 per cent and down from a week ago at four per cent.

As of 8 p.m. Tuesday, the province has administered 348,331 COVID-19 vaccine doses, an increase of 3,716 in the last day. There are 74,994 people fully vaccinated with two doses. Both Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, the only vaccines currently approved in Canada, require two shots.

Here is a breakdown of the total cases in Ontario by gender and age:

• 133,156 people are male — an increase of 594 cases.
• 137,363 people are female — an increase of 578 cases.
• 35,621 people are 19 and under — an increase of 164 cases.
• 99,443 people are 20 to 39 — an increase of 437 cases.
• 78,615 people are 40 to 59 — an increase of 367 cases.
• 39,275 people are 60 to 79 — an increase of 161 cases.
• 19,093 people are 80 and over — an increase of 56 cases.
• The province notes that not all cases have a reported age or gender.

The province notes that the number of cases publicly reported each day may not align with case counts reported by the local public health unit on a given day. Local public health units report when they were first notified of a case, which can be updated and changed as information becomes available. Data may also be pulled at different times.

Here is a breakdown of the total deaths related to COVID-19 by age:

• Deaths reported in ages 19 and under: 2
• Deaths reported in ages 20 to 39: 24
• Deaths reported in ages 40 to 59: 238
• Deaths reported in ages 60 to 79: 1,702
• Deaths reported in ages 80 and older: 4,338
• The province notes there may be a reporting delay for deaths.

Ontario long-term care homes

According to the Ministry of Long-Term Care, there have been 3,601 deaths reported among residents and patients in long-term care homes across Ontario which is an increase of 23 deaths. Eleven virus-related deaths in total have been reported among staff.

There are 216 current outbreaks in homes, which is a decrease of eight from the previous day.

The ministry also indicated there are currently 763 active cases among long-term care residents and 801 active cases among staff — down by 92 cases and down by 37 cases, respectively, in the last day.