Ontario is reporting 1,571 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, bringing the provincial total to 333,690.
Wednesday’s case count is slightly higher than Tuesday’s which saw 1,546 new infections, however more tests were completed. On Monday, 1,699 new cases were recorded and 1,791 on Sunday.
According to Wednesday’s provincial report, 459 cases were recorded in Toronto, 309 in Peel Region, 143 in York Region, 89 in Ottawa, 86 in Durham Region and 84 in Hamilton.
All other local public health units reported fewer than 70 new cases in the provincial report.
The death toll in the province has risen to 7,263 as 10 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.
Of the variants detected so far in the province, the B.1.1.7 VOC is currently the dominating known strain at 1,389 variant cases, which is up by 30 since the previous day, 50 B.1.351 variant cases which is up by three, and 47 P.1 variant cases which is up by 10.
The cumulative case count for a mutation that was detected but the lineage was not determined was 14,803, the government indicated there was an increase of 909 cases in the last day.
Meanwhile, 311,380 Ontario residents were reported to have recovered from COVID-19, which is about 93 per cent of known cases. Resolved cases increased by 1,531 from the previous day.
Active cases in Ontario now stand at 15,047 — up from the previous day when it was at 15,017, and up from March 17 when it was at 12,512. At the peak of the coronavirus surge in January, active cases hit above 30,000.
The government said 51,962 tests were processed in the last 24 hours. There is currently a backlog of 38,985 tests awaiting results. A total of 12,198,355 tests have been completed since the start of the pandemic.
Test positivity — the percentage of tests that come back positive — for Wednesday was 3.8 per cent. That figure is down from Tuesday when it was at 5.7 per cent, but is up from last week when it was 3.5 per cent.
Ontario reported 893 people are hospitalized with COVID-19 (up by 25 from the previous day) with 333 patients in intensive care units (up by nine) and 210 patients in ICUs on a ventilator (up by 17).
As of 8 p.m. on Tuesday, the provincial government reported administering 1,676,150 COVID-19 vaccine doses, representing an increase of 72,451 in the last day. There are 302,664 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.
