The number of new cases of COVID-19 continues to trend downward in Ontario with a little more than 200 new infections reported today.
In the province's epidemiological report released Tuesday, 230 new cases of the virus were reported, down from the 243 confirmed one day earlier.
The province’s latest disclosure marks the lowest number of new cases in Ontario since the end of March.
There are now 31,090 lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Ontario, including 24,829 recoveries and 2,464 deaths.
Today’s data also revealed that there were 337 new recoveries over the past 24 hours, outpacing new cases by 107.
Health Minister Christine Elliott said Monday that she was happy with the recent numbers but noted that people should not become complacent.
"Today was a very good day.... We were at 400 and 500 just a few weeks ago," she said at Queen’s Park on Monday. "This is the smallest increase we’ve had yet but we can’t expect that to happen every day."
The province reported more than 400 new cases on both Saturday and Sunday but officials said those numbers were inflated as many of the cases were older infections that were not previously included in the totals due to a reporting error at one of the provincial labs.
An additional 14 deaths were also reported today, down from the 24 confirmed in the previous report.
All but 104 deaths in Ontario involve people over the age of 60 and 1,715 deaths are in people ages 80 and over.
The province’s case fatality rate since the start of the pandemic now stands at 7.9 per cent.
The total number of outbreaks at long-term care homes remains unchanged at 312 and virus-related hospitalizations continue to drop.
The number of patients currently hospitalized with COVID-19 is now just 600, down from 641 one day earlier.
There are now 116 patients in intensive care and 88 of those are on a ventilator.
While the decline in case growth and hospitalizations is encouraging, it should be noted that there was once again a dip in the number of tests completed over a 24-hour period.
Over the weekend, the province was processing approximately 20,000 tests per day but only 13,509 tests were completed over the past 24 hours and yesterday's report indicated that only 15,357 specimens were processed.
