Ontario reports 486 new COVID-19 cases, 18 deaths with most from historic data

Ontario is reporting 486 new COVID-19 cases on Tuesday, a dip in the count after the past several days saw case counts above 600. The provincial case total now stands at 560,637.

Of the 486 new cases recorded, the data showed 279 were unvaccinated people, 41 were partially vaccinated people, 114 were fully vaccinated people and for 52 people the vaccination status was unknown.

According to Tuesday’s report, 128 cases were recorded in Toronto, 83 in Peel Region, 47 in Windsor-Essex, and 45 each in both Hamilton and York Region.

All other local public health units reported fewer than 45 new cases in the provincial report.

The death toll in the province has risen to at 9,471 as 18 more deaths were recorded. However, the ministry of health said due to a data clean-up, 16 of the deaths occurred more than two months ago.

As of 8 p.m. on Monday, 36,655 vaccines (13,230 for a first shot and 23.425 for a second shot) were administered in the last day.

There are more than 9.7 million people fully immunized with two doses which is 75.1 per cent of the eligible (12+) population. First dose coverage stands at 82.3 per cent.

Hospitalizations in Ontario

Ontario reported 295 people in general hospital wards with COVID-19 (up by 91 from the previous day) with 156 patients in intensive care units (up by five) and 125 patients in ICUs on a ventilator (up by four).

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.

The most recent data showed for those in general hospital wards with COVID, 116 were unvaccinated, 13 were partially vaccinated and 27 were fully vaccinated. For those in ICUs, 67 were unvaccinated while 10 were partially vaccinated and 7 were fully vaccinated.

In the third wave peak, which was the worst wave for hospitalizations, the province was seeing as many as 900 patients in ICUs with COVID. The province’s data shows 5,561 patients in total have ever been in ICU with 28,717 patients having been hospitalized due to COVID since the start of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, 546,113 Ontario residents were reported to have recovered from COVID-19, which is about 97 per cent of known cases. Resolved cases increased by 541 from the previous day.

Active cases in Ontario now stand at 5,053 — up from the previous day when it was at 5,126, and is up from Aug. 17 when it was at 3,930. At the peak of the second wave coronavirus surge in January, active cases hit just above 30,000. In the third wave in April, active cases topped 43,000.

The seven-day average has now reached 600 which is up from yesterday at 581, and is up from last week when it was 473. A month ago, the seven-day average was around 150.

The government said 17,369 tests were processed in the last 24 hours. There is currently a backlog of 11,370 tests awaiting results.

Test positivity for Tuesday hit 3 per cent. Last week, test positivity was at 2.6 per cent.

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: 145,839 variant cases, which is up by 95 since the previous day,

“Beta” the B.1.351 VOC: 1,500 variant cases, which is unchanged since the previous day.

“Gamma” the P.1 VOC: 5,221 variant cases, which is up by 2 since the previous day.

“Delta” B.1.617.2 VOC: 7,665 variant cases, which is up by 291 since the previous day.

NOTE: It takes several days for positive COVID-19 tests to be re-examined for the exact variant. Therefore, there may be more variant cases than overall cases in daily reporting.

More to come.

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