Ontario reports more than 1,500 new COVID-19 cases, 9 deaths

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Ontario is reporting 1,546 new COVID-19 cases on Tuesday, bringing the provincial total to 332,119.

Tuesday’s case count is lower than Monday’s which saw 1,699 new infections. On Sunday, 1,791 new cases were recorded and 1,829 on Saturday.

According to Tuesday’s provincial report, 465 cases were recorded in Toronto, 329 in Peel Region, 161 in York Region and 99 in Durham Region.

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 7,253 as nine more deaths were recorded.

Read more:
Ontario opens COVID-19 vaccines to more people, expands pharmacy pilot amid supply uncertainty

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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 1,359 variant cases, which is up by 19 since Monday, 47 B.1.351 variant cases which one was removed, and 37 P.1 variant cases which is up by one.

The cumulative case count for a mutation that was detected but the lineage was not determined was 13,894, the government indicated there was an increase of 666.

Meanwhile, 309,849 Ontario residents were reported to have recovered from COVID-19, which is about 93 per cent of known cases. Resolved cases increased by 1,271 from the previous day.

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Active cases in Ontario now stand at 15,017 — up from the previous day when it was at 14,751, and up from March 16 when it was at 12,506. At the peak of the coronavirus surge in January, active cases hit above 30,000.

The government said 32,556 tests were processed in the last 24 hours. There is currently a backlog of 31,325 tests awaiting results. A total of 12,146,393 tests have been completed since the start of the pandemic.

Test positivity — the percentage of tests that come back positive — for Tuesday was 5.7 per cent, the highest test positivity since late January. That figure is up from Monday when it was at 5.4 per cent, and up from last week at 4.5 per cent.

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Ontario reported 868 people are hospitalized with COVID-19 (up by 55 from the previous day) with 324 patients in intensive care units (up by 26) and 193 patients in ICUs on a ventilator (up by seven).

As of 8 p.m. on Monday, the provincial government reported administering 1,603,699 COVID-19 vaccine doses, representing an increase of 50,659 in the last day. There are 301,043 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.