Ontario health officials reported 165 new COVID-19 cases on Friday, a slight increase as a large swath of the province enters its third week in the second stage of reopening.

Only two deaths were reported throughout the province in the past 24 hours, the lowest daily death toll since March 25, when the province was facing skyrocketing rates of infection and capacity to process only a few thousand tests for infection each day.

One of the two deaths reported on Thursday in Ontario’s daily epidemiologic summary was classified as a health care worker, bringing the total number of deaths in that sector to seven.

Ontario reported 153 cases on Thursday, 149 on Wednesday and 157 on Tuesday.

“Locally, 31 of the province’s 34 public health units—every unit except Toronto, Peel and York—are reporting five or fewer cases, with 14 of them reporting no new cases at all,” Health Minister Christine Elliott said on Twitter on Friday.

Provincial labs processed 24,194 test specimens in the past 24 hours and a further 15,000 samples were under investigation on Friday.

Friday’s results represented a positivity rate of 0.68 per cent.

She said 179 more patients recovered from infection in the past 24 hours, meaning the number of remaining active cases declined by 14.

There have now been 35,535 lab-confirmed cases of novel coronavirus infection in Ontario, with 30,909 recovered patients and 2,682 deaths, with 1,944 remaining active cases.

Toronto, Peel and York Region accounted for 132 of Friday’s new cases, or 80 per cent of the total.

There were 155 Ontarians admitted to hospital for COVID-19 symptoms on Friday.

Of those, 40 were receiving treatment in intensive care.

Twenty-five patients were breathing with the help of a ventilator.