Ontario reports 135 COVID-19 cases, 4 deaths

Ontario is reporting 135 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, bringing the provincial total to 548,609.

According to Wednesday’s report, 12 cases were reported in Waterloo Region, 26 in Toronto, 13 in Durham and 16 in Peel Region.

All other local public health units reported 10 or fewer new cases in the provincial report.

The death toll in the province now stands at 9,300 as four new deaths were recorded.

As of 8 p.m. on Tuesday, more than 18.4 million total COVID-19 vaccine doses were administered. That marked an increase of 140,491 vaccines (17,486 for a first shot and 123,005 for a second shot) in the last day.

There are more than 7.8 million people fully immunized with two doses which is 64 per cent of the adult (18+) population. First dose adult coverage stands at 80 per cent.

Meanwhile, 537,975 Ontario residents were reported to have recovered from COVID-19, which is just over 98 per cent of known cases. Resolved cases increased by 151 from the previous day.

There were more resolved cases than new cases on Wednesday.

Active cases in Ontario now stand at 1,335.

The government said 20,750 tests were processed in the last 24 hours. There is currently a backlog of 7,379 tests awaiting results. A total of 16,392,538 tests have been completed since the start of the pandemic.

Test positivity stayed at 0.8 per cent on Wednesday.

Ontario reported 139 people are hospitalized with COVID-19 (down by six from the previous day) with 145 patients in intensive care units (down by four) and 70 patients in ICUs on a ventilator (down by 28).

Variants of concern in Ontario

Officials have listed breakdown data for the new VOCs (variants of concern) detected so far in the province which consist of the B.1.1.7 (now named by WHO as “Alpha” and was first detected in the United Kingdom), B.1.351 (now named by WHO as “Beta” and was first detected in South Africa), P.1 (now named by WHO as “Gamma” and was first detected in Brazil), and B.1.617.2 (now named by WHO as “Delta” and was first detected in India).

“Alpha” the B.1.1.7 VOC: 144,922 variant cases, which is up by 99 since the previous day,

“Beta” the B.1.351 VOC: 1,474 variant cases, up by seven since the previous day.

“Gamma” the P.1 VOC: 5,027 variant cases, up by 58 since the previous day.

“Delta” B.1.617.2 VOC: 3,693 variant cases, up by 353 since the previous day.

NOTE: It takes several days for positive COVID-19 tests to be re-examined for the exact variant. Therefore, there may be more variant cases than overall cases in daily reporting.