Ontario health officials are reporting three more cases of the UK variant of COVID-19 detected in the province.

All three of people with the new variant are residents of the GTA and all of them either travelled or had close contact with a person who had recently travelled, Ontario's Associate Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Barbara Yaffe said at her daily briefing Monday.

The first person is a York Region resident who recently travelled to the United Kingdom. The second person is a Peel Region resident who had close contact with a person who recently travelled to Dubai. The third person is a Toronto resident who recently travelled to the UK.

“Case and contact management is being performed by the relevant public health units,” Yaffe said. “I do want to take this opportunity to remind Ontarians that they should travel only if absolutely necessary. And if you do travel, you must maintain your quarantine for 14 days upon return to the country.

“I cannot emphasize how important this is. COVID-19 does not know borders.”

The UK variant of the virus is more contagious and has spread rapidly through southern England. It has also been detected in a number of other countries recently, including Canada.

The new cases announced by Yaffe Monday brings Ontario's total known number of cases of the variant to six so far.

Yafee added that Public Health Ontario continues to screen for gene variations in virus samples collected from positive patients, particularly in people who have travelled and so-called super spreaders, though she said she’s not sure how many samples the province is regularly testing.

“I don’t know the specific number but what I can tell you is Public Health Ontario is working in collaboration with many other lab and academic partners – both in Ontario and across Canada – including the National microbiology lab, to develop a system for looking at the genomics and right now following the samples that are being tested for the UK variant.”

She said so far no cases of the South African variant have been detected in Ontario.

News of the new cases comes as Ontario continues to see daily case numbers in the 3,000 range. The province reported 3,300 new cases of the virus on Monday.