Ontario reports 1,315 new COVID-19 cases over past 2 days

Ontario is reporting 647 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday and 668 on Friday, bringing the provincial case total to 586,817.

The Ministry of Health had not released updated data on Thursday because it was a federal holiday.

Of the 668 new cases recorded for Friday, the data showed 394 were unvaccinated people, 39 were partially vaccinated people, 166 were fully vaccinated people and for 69 people the vaccination status was unknown.

According to Friday’s report, 110 cases were recorded in Toronto, 55 each in Ottawa, 42 in Hamilton, 55 in York Region, 65 in Peel Region, 43 in Windsor-Essex, and 40 in Durham

All other local public health units reported fewer than 35 new cases in the provincial report.

The death toll in the province has risen to 9,743 as 20 more deaths were recorded over the two days. However, the ministry of health noted some of those deaths occurred over a month ago and were noted due to a data cleanup.

As of 8 p.m. on Thursday, 67,257 vaccines (25,397 for a first shot and 41,860 for a second shot) were administered in the last 48 hours.

There are more than 10.5 million people fully immunized with two doses, which is 80.9 per cent of the eligible (12 and older) population. First dose coverage stands at 86.29 per cent.

Meanwhile, 572,105 Ontario residents were reported to have recovered from COVID-19, which is about 97 per cent of known cases.

Active cases in Ontario now stand at 4,969.

The government said 74,715 tests were processed in the previous 48 hours. There are 14,067 tests currently under investigation.

Test positivity was 1.7 per cent on Thursday and 1.8 per cent on Friday.

Ontario reported 278 people in general hospital wards with COVID-19 (down by 14 from Wednesday) with 163 patients in intensive care units (down by nine from Wednesday) and 141 patients in intensive care units on a ventilator (down by eight from Wednesday).

Provincial officials recently announced they would start including the vaccination status of those hospitalized due to COVID-19 as part of their daily COVID-19 data reporting. They noted the new dataset will grow and improve over time as more information is collected.

For those in general hospital wards with COVID, 115 were unvaccinated, 10 were partially vaccinated and 28 were fully vaccinated. For those in ICUs, 94 were unvaccinated while eight were partially vaccinated and seven were fully vaccinated.

Cases among students and staff at Ontario schools

Meanwhile, government figures show there are currently 810 out of 4,844 schools in Ontario with at least one COVID-19 case.

On Friday, Ontario reported 127 new COVID-19 cases in schools — with 114 among students and 13 among staff.

There are 1,624 active infections among both students and staff.

Five schools are closed as a result of positive cases.