Ontario reports 172 new COVID-19 cases, 2 deaths

Ontario is reporting 172 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday, bringing the provincial total to 549,328.

According to Sunday’s report, 48 cases were recorded in Toronto, 23 in Peel Region, and 11 in Hamilton and Durham.

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 9,313 as two new deaths were recorded.

As of 8 p.m. on Saturday, more than 18.9 million total COVID-19 vaccine doses were administered. That marked an increase of 103,812 vaccines (14,821 for a first shot and 88,891 for a second shot) in the last day.

1:56 Toronto COVID-19 vaccine clinic targeting communities with lower uptake rates

There are more than eight million people fully immunized with two doses which is 67.7 per cent of the adult (18+) population. First dose adult coverage stands at 80.8 per cent.

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Meanwhile, 538,565 Ontario residents were reported to have recovered from COVID-19, which is just over 98 per cent of known cases. Resolved cases increased by 144 from the previous day.

There were less resolved cases than new cases on Sunday.

Active cases in Ontario now stand at 1,450.

The government said more than 13,900 tests were processed in the last 24 hours. There is currently a backlog of 3,991 tests awaiting results. A total of 16,464,927 tests have been completed since the start of the pandemic.

Test positivity jumped to 1.1 per cent on Sunday, up from 0.8 Saturday.

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: 145,386 variant cases, which is up by 131 since the previous day,

“Beta” the B.1.351 VOC: 1,492 variant cases, up by three since the previous day.

“Gamma” the P.1 VOC: 5,142 variant cases, up by two since the previous day.

“Delta” B.1.617.2 VOC: 3,913 variant cases, up by 16 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.