Ontario reports over 300 new COVID-19 cases for 1st time since late June

Ontario is reporting 340 new COVID-19 cases on Friday, marking the first time cases have been over 300 since late June.

The provincial total now stands at 551,678.

According to Friday’s report, 80 cases were recorded in Toronto, 41 in York Region, 36 in Peel Region, 23 in Windsor-Essex, 22 in Waterloo, 15 in Middlesex-London and Hamilton,14 in Grey Bruce, and 13 in Durham Region.

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 9,392 as 18 more deaths were recorded. However, the ministry of health indicated 16 of those deaths occurred more than six weeks ago and were included due to a data clean-up.

As of 8 p.m. on Thursday, 53,975 vaccines (11,745 for a first shot and 42,230 for a second shot) were administered in the last day.

There are more than 9.2 million people fully immunized with two doses which is 70.8 per cent of the eligible (12+) population. First dose coverage stands at 80.7 per cent.

Meanwhile, 540,407 Ontario residents were reported to have recovered from COVID-19, which is about 98 per cent of known cases. Resolved cases increased by 149 from the previous day.

Active cases in Ontario now stand at 1,879.

The government said over 23,000 tests were processed in the last 24 hours. There is currently a backlog of 8,227 tests awaiting results. A total of 16,671,910 tests have been completed since the start of the pandemic.

Test positivity for Friday hit 1.4 per cent.

Ontario reported 114 people are hospitalized with COVID-19 (up by one from the previous day) with 110 patients in intensive care units (unchanged) and 80 patients in ICUs on a ventilator (up by two).

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: 145,559 variant cases, which is up by 16 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: 5,170 variant cases, which is up by two since the previous day.

“Delta” B.1.617.2 VOC: 5,137 variant cases, which is up by 43 since the previous day.