Ontario reports under 600 new COVID-19 cases for 3rd straight day

Ontario is reporting 554 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, the third day in a row the count is below 600. The provincial case total now stands at 571,332.

Of the 554 new cases recorded, the data showed 319 were unvaccinated people, 56 were partially vaccinated people, 136 were fully vaccinated people and for 44 people the vaccination status was unknown.

According to Wednesday’s report, 149 cases were recorded in Toronto, 47 in Windsor Essex, 46 in Peel Region, 41 in York Region and 33 in Niagara Region.

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 9,569 as 16 more deaths were recorded. However, the ministry of health said 11 of the deaths occurred within the last week and five of the deaths occurred more than two months ago due to data cleanup.

Hospitalizations in Ontario

Ontario reported 375 people in general hospital wards with COVID-19 (up by 80 from the previous day) with 194 patients in intensive care units (up by two) and 167 patients in ICUs on a ventilator (up by two).

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, 162 were unvaccinated, 14 were partially vaccinated and 28 were fully vaccinated. For those in ICUs, 113 were unvaccinated while 7 were partially vaccinated and 8 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 5,676 patients in total have ever been in ICU with 29,245 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 Tuesday, 38,174 vaccines (17,447 for a first shot and 20,727 for a second shot) were administered in the last day.

There are more than 10 million people fully immunized with two doses, which is 77.4 per cent of the eligible (12 and older) population. First dose coverage stands at 83.7 per cent.

Meanwhile, 555,723 Ontario residents were reported to have recovered from COVID-19, which is about 97 per cent of known cases. Resolved cases increased by 770 from the previous day.

Active cases in Ontario now stand at 6,040 — down from the previous day when it was at 6,272, but is up from Sept. 1 when it was at 5,861. 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 down from yesterday’s at 747, but is up from last week when it was 701. A month ago, the seven-day average was around 300.

The government said 21,840 tests were processed in the last 24 hours. There is currently a backlog of 13,944 tests awaiting results.

Test positivity hit 3.3 per cent. Last week, test positivity was at 2.9 per cent.

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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): 146,437 variant cases, which is up by two 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): 5,223 variant cases, which is unchanged since the previous day.

“Delta” the B.1.617.2 VOC (first detected in India): 13,008 variant cases, which is up by 361 since the previous day. This strain is dominating 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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