Ontario reports 807 new COVID-19 cases, more than 10M people now fully vaccinated

Ontario is reporting 807 new COVID-19 cases on Friday, as the province has reached a milestone of more than 10 million people who are now fully vaccinated against the virus. The provincial case total now stands at 567,878.

Of the 807 new cases recorded, the data showed 499 were unvaccinated people, 68 were partially vaccinated people, 179 were fully vaccinated people and for 60 people the vaccination status was unknown.

According to Friday’s report, 175 cases were recorded in Toronto, 136 in Peel Region, 85 in York Region, 72 in Windsor-Essex, 50 in Durham Region, 49 in Ottawa, and 46 in Hamilton.

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

The death toll in the province has risen to 9,536 as six more deaths were recorded. However, the ministry of health said six of the deaths occurred in the last week with the other six having occurred more than a week ago.

Hospitalizations in Ontario

Ontario reported 326 people in general hospital wards with COVID-19 (up by six from the previous day) with 169 patients in intensive care units (up by seven) and 144 patients in ICUs on a ventilator (up by seven).

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, 142 were unvaccinated, 17 were partially vaccinated and 34 were fully vaccinated. For those in ICUs, 103 were unvaccinated while 8 were partially vaccinated and 12 were fully vaccinated.

In the third wave peak, which was the worst wave for hospitalizations, the province saw as many as 900 patients in ICUs with COVID. The province’s data has recorded 5,641 patients in total have ever been in ICU with 29,080 patients having been hospitalized due to COVID since the start of the pandemic.

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

As of 8 p.m. on Thursday, 43,855 vaccines (21,284 for a first shot and 22,284 for a second shot) were administered in the last day.

Typically, second shots have been outpacing first shots but Thursday saw an almost even split between first and second doses since the vaccine certificate system was announced by the province on Wednesday.

There are now more than 10 million people fully immunized with two doses, which is 76.8 per cent of the eligible (12 and older) population. First dose coverage stands at 83.3 per cent.

Meanwhile, 552,248 Ontario residents were reported to have recovered from COVID-19, which is about 97 per cent of known cases. Resolved cases increased by 738 from the previous day.

Active cases in Ontario now stand at 6,094 — up from the previous day when it was at 6,031, and up from Aug. 27 when it was at 5,444. 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 732 which is the up from yesterday’s at 728, and is up from last week when it was 665. A month ago, the seven-day average was around 200.

The government said 28,786 tests were processed in the last 24 hours. There is currently a backlog of 13,055 tests awaiting results.

Test positivity for Friday hit 3.2 per cent. Last week, test positivity was at 3 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 consists of:

“Alpha” the B.1.1.7 VOC (first detected in the United Kingdom): 146,428 variant cases, which is up by three since the previous day. This strain dominated Ontario’s third wave.

“Beta” the B.1.351 VOC (first detected in South Africa): 1,501 variant cases, which is unchanged since the previous day.

“Gamma” the P.1 VOC (first detected in Brazil): 5,222 variant cases, which is unchanged since the previous day.

“Delta” the B.1.617.2 VOC (first detected in India): 11,319 variant cases, which is up by 325 since the previous day. This strain is currently the dominating strain for Ontario’s fourth wave.

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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