Ontario is reporting 192 new COVID-19 cases on Friday, bringing the provincial total to 548,986.
According to Friday’s report, 43 cases were recorded in Toronto, 25 in Peel Region, 18 York Region and Waterloo and 11 in Hamilton and Durham 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 9,308 as one new deaths were recorded.
As of 8 p.m. on Thursday, more than 18.7 million total COVID-19 vaccine doses were administered. That marked an increase of 120,231 vaccines (17,583 for a first shot and 102,648 for a second shot) in the last day.
There are more than eight million people fully immunized with two doses which is 66 per cent of the adult (18+) population. First dose adult coverage stands at 80.5 per cent.
Meanwhile, 538,271 Ontario residents were reported to have recovered from COVID-19, which is just over 98 per cent of known cases. Resolved cases increased by 147 from the previous day.
There were more resolved cases than new cases on Friday.
Active cases in Ontario now stand at 1,407.
The government said 19,757 tests were processed in the last 24 hours. There is currently a backlog of 6,580 tests awaiting results. A total of 16,431,894 tests have been completed since the start of the pandemic.
Test positivity stayed at 0.9 per cent on Friday.
Ontario reported 137 people are hospitalized with COVID-19 (down by three from the previous day) with 136 patients in intensive care units (down by five) and 84 patients in ICUs on a ventilator (unchanged).
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: 145,148 variant cases, which is up by 127 since the previous day,
“Beta” the B.1.351 VOC: 1,485 variant cases, up by six since the previous day.
“Gamma” the P.1 VOC: 5,130 variant cases, up by 34 since the previous day.
“Delta” B.1.617.2 VOC: 3,885 variant cases, up by 131 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.