Ontario is reporting 3,166 new COVID-19 cases and 23 deaths on Friday, as officials warned data for Toronto and central parts of the province were incomplete.

Ontario reported 3,424 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, with 2,941 on Wednesday and 2,791 on Tuesday.

The rolling seven-day average of cases now stands at 3,266, down from 3,369 on Thursday.

Public Health Ontario said “due to a technical issue with the laboratory data feed, today’s case count may be underreported for the Central East, Central West and Toronto regions.”

Counts from Peel Region and Toronto were both about 10 per cent below the previous day’s total, at 817 for Peel and 876 for Toronto.

Across the rest of the GTA, Durham reported 205 cases, York Region reported 300, Hamilton reported 148 and Halton Region reported 139.

Provincial labs processed 51,338 specimens in the past 24 hours, with another 25,957 awaiting investigation.

“We've probably seen the worst day of this this third wave, and that means we have hope ahead of us,” Ontario Hospital Association CEO Anthony Dale told CTV News Toronto on Friday. “We have better days ahead as we slowly climb down from this third wave. It will take continued sacrifice, though, and very hard work by all of us, if we're to do that.”

Two of the 23 deaths reported Friday involved residents of the long-term care system.

One of the deaths reported on Friday involved someone aged 19 or under.

Middlesex-London Health Unit (MLHU) Medical Officer Dr. Chris Mackie announced the death during a briefing on Thursday, saying the 18-year-old died on the same day he was admitted to hospital.

Mackie, however, said that it was unclear whether the teen had any underlying medical conditions.

"Unfortunately, other people in his family are also sick and so it's difficult for us to get full data,” he said.

The province says it is aware of four deaths that involved people aged 19 or under throughout the pandemic, along with 55 deaths of people aged 20 to 39.

There have now been 8,236 centrally-confirmed deaths in Ontario since March 2020.

The active caseload across the province stood at 33,645 on Friday, down from 38,062 one week ago.

Ontario has now been under a state of emergency and stay-at-home order for approximately one month.

In that time, the rolling seven-day average of cases has declined from a high of 4,292 per day on April 16 to 3,266 today. But Dale said that it may not be time to lift restrictions just yet, especially with hospitalization rates remaining high.

The Ministry of Health said there were 1,924 patients in Ontario hospitals receiving treatment for COVID-19 on Friday, down 43 from Thursday.

Of those, 858 were in intensive care and 611 were breathing with the help of a ventilator.

“We can't let our guard down. We cannot reopen, in my personal opinion, for the Victoria Day long weekend,” Dale told CTV News Toronto. “Unfortunately, we have to get this virus under total control so that we never have to deal with this again. There can be no fourth wave.”

The province says 144,742 doses of approved COVID-19 vaccines were administered on Thursday, with a total of 5,885,485 shots administered since Dec. 2020.

A total of 387,484 people have been fully vaccinated.

The numbers used in this story are found in the Ontario Ministry of Health's COVID-19 Daily Epidemiologic Summary. The number of cases for any city or region may differ slightly from what is reported by the province, because local units report figures at different times.