Ontario is reporting 581 new COVID-19 cases on Labour Day holiday Monday and 564 on Tuesday. The provincial total now stands at 570,778.
The province released two sets of data due to the holiday.
Of the 581 new cases recorded on Monday, the data showed 351 were unvaccinated people, 64 were partially vaccinated people, 124 were fully vaccinated people and for 43people the vaccination status was unknown.
Of the 564 new cases recorded on Tuesday, the data showed 339 were unvaccinated people, 37 were partially vaccinated people, 130 were fully vaccinated people and for 58 people the vaccination status was unknown.
Monday and Tuesday’s case counts are well below what the province has seen in the past week but there were also fewer tests processed than usual on both days.
According to Monday’s report, 154 cases were recorded in Toronto, 100 in Peel Region, 71 in Hamilton, 68 in Windsor-Essex, 59 in York Region, 51 in Ottawa, 46 in Durham Region and 42 in Niagara Region.
According to Tuesday’s report, 114 cases were recorded in Toronto, 87 in Peel Region, 61 in York Region, 55 in Windsor-Essex and 40 in Hamilton.
All other local public health units reported fewer than 40 new cases in the provincial report.
The death toll in the province has risen to 9,553 as Monday saw two more deaths and Tuesday saw three more deaths recorded.
Hospitalizations in Ontario
Ontario reported 295 people in general hospital wards with COVID-19 (up by seven from the previous day) with 192 patients in intensive care units (up by five) and 165 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.
Due to the holiday weekend, the latest data comes as of Sept. 4. For those in general hospital wards with COVID, 146 were unvaccinated, 716 were partially vaccinated and 32 were fully vaccinated. For those in ICUs, 102 were unvaccinated while 7 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 5,665 patients in total have ever been in ICU with 29,202 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 Monday, 14,391 vaccines (6,658 for a first shot and 7,733 for a second shot) were administered in the last day. On the previous day, 21,325 vaccine doses were administered (9,643 for a first shot and 11,682 for a second shot).
There are more than 10 million people fully immunized with two doses which is 77.2 per cent of the eligible (12+) population. First dose coverage stands at 83.7 per cent.
Meanwhile, 554,953 Ontario residents were reported to have recovered from COVID-19, which is about 97 per cent of known cases. Resolved cases increased by 716 from Monday and 688 from Tuesday.
Active cases in Ontario now stand at 6,272 — down from the previous day when it was at 6,399, but is up from Aug. 31 when it was at 5,868. 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 747, which is up from yesterday at 741 and is up from last week at 702. A month ago, the seven-day average was around 300.
The government said 17,118 tests were processed for Tuesday’s report, and 19,200 tests for Monday’s. There is currently a backlog of 8,733 tests awaiting results.
Test positivity for Tuesday was 3.4 per cent. That figure is slightly down up from Monday’s at 3.6 per cent. Last week, test positivity was at 3.1 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): 146,435 variant cases, which is up by four 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): 12,647 variant cases, which is up by 10 since the previous day. This strain is currently 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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