Ontario is reporting 218 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday, the fourth straight day cases have hit over 200. The provincial case total now stands at 550,654.
According to Sunday’s report, 40 cases were recorded in Toronto, 33 in Peel Region, 23 in York Region, 16 in Middlesex-London, 14 in Hamilton, 13 in Durham, and 12 in Waterloo.
All other local public health units reported 10 or fewer new cases in the provincial report.
The death toll in the province has risen to 9,347 as two more deaths were recorded.
As of 8 p.m. on Saturday, 60,583 vaccines (10,886 for a first shot and 49,697 for a second shot) were administered in the last day.
In Ontario, 80.4 per cent of people aged 12-plus have received at least one vaccine dose and 69.2 per cent are fully vaccinated.
Test positivity for Sunday hit 1.4 per cent.
Meanwhile, 539,680 Ontario residents were reported to have recovered from COVID-19, which is about 98 per cent of known cases. Resolved cases increased by 155 from the previous day.
Active cases in Ontario now stand at 1,667.
The government said more than 14,100 tests were processed in the last 24 hours. There is currently a backlog of 4,368 tests awaiting results. A total of 16,584680 tests have been completed since the start of the pandemic.
Ontario reported 78 people are hospitalized with COVID-19 (down by 27 from the previous day) with 110 patients in intensive care units (down by two) and 79 patients in ICUs on a ventilator (down by four).
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: 145,531 variant cases, which is down by seven since the previous day,
“Beta” the B.1.351 VOC: 1,493 variant cases, which is unchanged since the previous day.
“Gamma” the P.1 VOC: 5,163 variant cases, which is up by two since the previous day.
“Delta” B.1.617.2 VOC: 4,802 variant cases, which is up by 61 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.