Ontario is reporting 1,508 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, bringing the provincial total to 321,956.
Wednesday’s case count is higher than Tuesday’s, which saw 1,074 new infections. On Monday, 1,268 new cases were recorded and 1,747 on Sunday (a portion of those cases were older ones recently inputted into the provincial data system).
According to Wednesday’s provincial report, 542 cases were recorded in Toronto, 253 in Peel Region, 107 in York Region, 74 in Simcoe-Muskoka, 69 in Ottawa, 66 in Niagara Region and 63 in Thunder Bay.
All other local public health units reported fewer than 50 new cases in the provincial report.
The death toll in the province has risen to 7,187 as 14 more deaths were recorded.
Officials have listed breakdown data for the new VOCs (variants of concern) which consist of the B.1.1.7 (first detected in the United Kingdom), B.1.351 (first detected in South Africa), and P.1 (first detected in Brazil) mutations.
The B.1.1.7 VOC is currently the dominating known strain at 1,134 variant cases, which is up by three since yesterday, 47 B.1.351 variant cases which is up by one, and 34 P.1 variant cases which is unchanged, that have been detected so far in the province.
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The cumulative case count for a mutation that was detected but the lineage was not determined was 9,652, an increase of 521, the government indicated.
Meanwhile, 302,257 Ontarians were reported to have recovered from COVID-19, which is 94 per cent of known cases. Resolved cases increased by 1,488 from the previous day.
Active cases in Ontario now stand at 12,512 — up from the previous day when it was at 12,506, and is up from March 10 when it was at 11,311. At the peak of the coronavirus surge in January, active cases hit above 30,000.
The government said 49,128 tests were processed in the last 24 hours. There is currently a backlog of 35,201 tests awaiting results. A total of 11,866,738 tests have been completed since the start of the pandemic.
Test positivity — the percentage of tests that come back positive — for Wednesday was 3.5 per cent, down from Tuesday at 4.5 per cent, but up from last week at 2.5 per cent.
Ontario reported 741 people hospitalized with COVID-19 (down by 20 from the previous day) with 300 patients in intensive care units (up by eight) and 190 patients in ICUs on a ventilator (down by four).
As of 8 p.m. on Tuesday, the provincial government reported administering 1,301,334 COVID-19 vaccine doses, representing an increase of 58,202 in the last day. There are 290,659 people fully vaccinated with two doses.
Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Oxford-AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson are the vaccines currently approved in Canada. The first three require two shots administered several weeks apart while the fourth requires only one.
— More to come.
© 2021 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
