Ontario is reporting more than 100 new cases of COVID-19 for the fifth day in a row, marking the continuation of a slow but steady upward trend that has been underway for most of August.
The Ministry of Health says that there were 114 new instances of the virus confirmed on Sunday as the province’s labs processed 25,098 tests.
It is a slight increase on the 114 new cases confirmed one day prior but remains short of the 148 cases confirmed on Aug. 28, which represented the highest daily count since July.
The province has now seen the number of new cases hit triple digits on 11 of the last 12 days.
This is after the province went an entire week earlier this month without recording that many cases.
Speaking with reporters during a briefing on Monday afternoon, Ontario’s Medical Officer of Health Dr. David Williams said that the rise in cases observed last week “was concerning” and that he is “relieved” to see the numbers at least returning to the low 100s these last few days.
“We did ask about some of those numbers around that peak and we found in different heath units clusters of outbreaks around some workplaces and some places where people had gathered in social gatherings against the advice of public health officials,” he said. “So again I would emphasize the need for people to stick to the task. Even though we don’t have large numbers (of cases) here in Ontario, there is still 100, 110 or 112 cases every day.”
Of the new cases reported on Monday, half of them were either in Toronto (41 cases) or Peel Region (16 cases) while another 18 were spread across the rest of the GTA, including 12 in York Region.
Ottawa also continues to be a hotspot of infection, adding another 21 cases over the last 24 hours.
The good news is that 18 of the province’s 34 public health units reported no new cases at all over the last 24 hours.
The number of active cases in the province, however, continues to rise after being on the decline for months.
On Monday the number of new cases exceeded the number of cases moved over to “recovered” in the province’s database by 41, pushing the total number to 1,221.
Of the new cases, nearly half (54) involved people between the ages of 20 and 39, continuing a recent trend. Those over the age of 60 accounted for just 23 of the 114 new infections reported on Monday.
Hospitalizations, meanwhile, remain relatively stable.
There are currently 49 COVID-19 patients receiving treatment in Ontario hospitals, though the Ministry of Health says that number does not include data from 35 hospitals that failed to upload the information to the provincial database over the weekend.
The number of COVID-19 patients being treated in intensive care units is 18. That number had peaked at 264 in April.
The seven-day rolling average of new cases now stands at 114.6. It had stood at 108.9 at this time last week and 83 as of Aug. 17.
Other highlights from the data:
- There was one new death confirmed over the last 24 hours. The total death toll attributed to the virus now stands at 2,811
- There were two new outbreaks in long-term care homes reported over the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of active outbreaks in those setting to 15
- The total number of confirmed cases since the beginning of the pandemic now stands at 42,309
- About 11.5 per cent of all confirmed cases (4,872) have resulted in hospitalization
- The province has now conducted 2,966,343 individual tests for COVID-19
