Ontario reports 613 new COVID-19 cases, no deaths

Ontario is reporting 613 new COVID-19 cases on Monday and no additional virus-related deaths. The provincial case total now stands at 584,541.

Of the 613 new cases recorded, the data showed 350 were unvaccinated people, 35 were partially vaccinated people, 159 were fully vaccinated people and for 69 people the vaccination status was unknown.

According to Monday’s report, 117 cases were recorded in Toronto, 70 in Peel Region, 48 in York Region, 46 in Hamilton, 45 in Windsor-Essex, 41 in Ottawa, and 35 in Eastern Ontario Health Unit.

All other local public health units reported fewer than 30 new cases in the provincial report.

The death toll in the province has remained at 9,704 as no new deaths were recorded.

Vaccinations, recoveries, testing, 7-day average in Ontario

As of 8 p.m. on Sunday, 20,454 vaccines (7,401 for a first shot and 13,053 for a second shot) were administered in the last day.

There are more than 10.4 million people fully immunized with two doses, which is 80.3 per cent of the eligible (12 and older) population. First dose coverage stands at 85.9 per cent.

Meanwhile, 569,211 Ontario residents were reported to have recovered from COVID-19, which is about 97 per cent of known cases. Resolved cases increased by 578 from the previous day.

Active cases in Ontario now stand at 5,626 — up  from the previous day when it was at 5,591, but is down from Sept. 20 when it was at 6,376. 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 621 which is the same as yesterday’s, and is also down from the week prior when it was 711. A month ago, the seven-day average was around 700.

The government said 22,633 tests were processed in the previous 24 hours. There is currently a backlog of 9,306 tests awaiting results.

Test positivity hit 2 per cent. Last week, test positivity was at 2.7 per cent.

Hospitalizations in Ontario

Ontario reported 186 people in general hospital wards with COVID-19 (down by 12 from the previous day) with 184 patients in intensive care units (up by seven) and 157  patients in intensive care units on a ventilator (up by six).

In the third wave peak, which was the worst wave for hospitalizations, the province saw as many as 900 patients in ICUs with COVID and almost 2,400 in general hospital wards. The province’s data has recorded 5,822 patients in total have ever been in ICU with 29,798 patients having been hospitalized due to COVID since the start of the pandemic.

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.

Due to incomplete data from the weekend, the latest numbers come from Saturday. For those in general hospital wards with COVID, 133 were unvaccinated, 9 were partially vaccinated and 43 were fully vaccinated. For those in ICUs, 102 were unvaccinated while 11 were partially vaccinated and 7  were fully vaccinated.

Variants of concern in Ontario

Officials have listed breakdown data for the new VOCs (variants of concern) detected so far in the province which consists of:

“Alpha” the B.1.1.7 VOC (first detected in the United Kingdom): 146,460 variant cases, which one case was removed. This strain dominated Ontario’s third wave.

“Delta” the B.1.617.2 VOC (first detected in India): 18,297 variant cases, which is up by 37 since the previous day. This strain is dominating Ontario’s fourth wave.

“Beta” the B.1.351 VOC (first detected in South Africa): 1,502 variant cases, which is unchanged since the previous day.

“Gamma” the P.1 VOC (first detected in Brazil): 5,229 variant cases, which is unchanged 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.

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