Ontario is reporting 2,169 new COVID-19 cases on Friday, bringing the provincial total to 338,239.
Friday’s case count is lower than Thursday’s which saw 2,380 new infections although about 280 of those cases were older. On Wednesday, 1,571 new cases were recorded and 1,546 on Tuesday.
According to Friday’s provincial report, 682 cases were recorded in Toronto, 379 in Peel Region, 254 in York Region, 129 in Ottawa, 123 in Durham Region and 122 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 7,292 as 12 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 1,494 variant cases, which is up by 36 since the previous day, 60 B.1.351 variant cases which is up by nine, and 58 P.1 variant cases which is up by four.
The cumulative case count for a mutation that was detected but the lineage was not determined was 16,680, the government indicated there was an increase of 1,023 cases in the last day.
Meanwhile, 314,384 Ontario residents were reported to have recovered from COVID-19, which is about 93 per cent of known cases. Resolved cases increased by 1,675 from the previous day.
Active cases in Ontario now stand at 16,563 — up from the previous day when it was at 16,081, and up from March 19 when it was at 13,253. At the peak of the coronavirus surge in January, active cases hit above 30,000.
The government said 53,436 tests were processed in the last 24 hours. There is currently a backlog of 37,364 tests awaiting results. A total of 12,311,868 tests have been completed since the start of the pandemic.
Test positivity — the percentage of tests that come back positive — for Friday was 3.8 per cent. That figure is the same as Thursday, and is up from last week when it was 3.3 per cent.
Ontario reported 913 people are hospitalized with COVID-19 (up by 19 from the previous day) with 359 patients in intensive care units (up by 27) and 215 patients in ICUs on a ventilator (up by three).
As of 8 p.m. on Thursday, the provincial government reported administering 1,838,592 COVID-19 vaccine doses, representing an increase of 82,996 in the last day. There are 306,373 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.
