Ontario reports nearly 1,700 new COVID-19 cases, 15 deaths

Ontario reported 1,691 COVID-19 cases on Sunday, bringing the total number of cases in the province to 522,465.

“Locally, there are 455 new cases in Toronto, 326 in Peel and 173 in York Region,” Health Minister Christine Elliott said.

For comparison, last Sunday 2,199 cases were reported.

Fifteen new deaths were also announced on May 23, bringing the provincial death toll to 8,614.

A total of 493,179 coronavirus cases are considered resolved, which is up by 2,458 and is 94.4 per cent of all confirmed cases.

More than 31,200 additional tests were completed. Ontario has now completed a total of 15,004,716 tests and 9,513 remain under investigation.

The province indicated that the positivity rate for the last day was 5.7 per cent, which is down from Saturday’s report, when it was six per cent, and down from last Sunday’s report, when it was 6.8 per cent.

There have been 117,941 confirmed cases of the B.1.1.7 variant, first discovered in the U.K. (up by 1,020), as well as 805 of the B.1.351 variant which was discovered in South Africa (up by 22), and 2,405 cases of the P.1 variant, first found in Brazil (up by 88).

Provincial figures showed there are 1,041 people hospitalized with the virus (down by 166), with 693 in intensive care due to COVID-19 (down by 13), 480 of whom are on a ventilator (down by 24).

However, the province noted that more than 10 per cent of hospitals did not submit their daily bed census for Sunday’s report — as is often the case on weekends — possibly causing the reported number of hospitalizations to be lower than it actually is.

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Here is a breakdown of Ontario’s cases by age and gender:

• 259,911 people are male
• 258,361 people are female
• 82,587 people are 19 and under
• 195,201 people are 20 to 39
• 149,983 people are 40 to 59
• 70,004 people are 60 to 79
• 24,592 people are 80 and over

The province notes that not all cases have a reported age or gender.

The province also notes that the number of cases publicly reported each day may not align with case counts reported by local public health units 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.

As of Saturday evening, 8,065,607 COVID-19 vaccine doses had been administered in Ontario, marking an increase of 140,330.

So far, 531,603 people in the province are considered to be fully vaccinated.