Ontario reports more than 300 new COVID-19 cases for 2nd day in a row

Ontario is reporting 378 new COVID-19 cases on Saturday, marking the second day in a row cases have been over 300. On Friday, 340 cases were reported.

The provincial total now stands at 552,056.

According to Saturday’s report, 94 cases were recorded in Toronto, 62 in York Region, 38 in Peel Region, 30 in Hamilton, 20 in Durham Region and Waterloo, and 19 in Windsor-Essex.

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 9,401 as nine more deaths were recorded. However, the ministry of health indicated one of those deaths occurred more than two months ago and were included due to a data clean-up.

Active cases in Ontario now stand at 2,057.

The government said almost 20,900 tests were processed in the last 24 hours. There is currently a backlog of 7,558 tests awaiting results. A total of 16,692,768 tests have been completed since the start of the pandemic.

Test positivity for Saturday hit 1.8 per cent. Test positivity was 1.4 on Friday.

Ontario reported 138 people are hospitalized with COVID-19 (up by 24 from the previous day) with 111 patients in intensive care units (up by one) and 82 patients in ICUs on a ventilator (up by two).

As of 8 p.m. on Friday, 61,041 vaccines (12,108 for a first shot and 48,933 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 71.1 per cent of the eligible (12+) population. First dose coverage stands at 80.8 per cent.

Meanwhile, 540,598 Ontario residents were reported to have recovered from COVID-19, which is about 98 per cent of known cases. Resolved cases increased by 191 from the previous day.

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: 145,564 variant cases, which is up by five 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: 5,174 variant cases, which is up by four since the previous day.

“Delta” B.1.617.2 VOC: 5,182 variant cases, which is up by 45 since the previous day.