The province’s top public health doctor says Ontario is getting close to exiting the third wave of the pandemic as officials record fewer than 1,000 new COVID-19 cases for the first time in nearly three months today.
Ontario logged 916 new infections on Monday, marking the lowest single-day total since Feb. 17 and the first time since March 6 that the province saw its daily case count dip below 1,000.
Ontario reported 1,033 new cases on Sunday, 1,057 on Saturday, and 1,446 new infections last Monday.
The rolling seven-day average of new cases now stands at 1,078, down from 1,775 last week.
Dr. David Williams, Ontario’s outgoing chief medical officer of health, has previously said he would like to see daily case counts drop to between 550 and 600 before beginning to ease public health restrictions. The Ford government has set a tentative date of June 14 for the resumption of outdoor dining and the reopening non-essential retail stores at 15 per cent capacity.
“We are still in the third wave. Our numbers are coming down but we are not yet below where we were (in) the transition between the second and third wave. We are getting close and we want to make sure that we continue on this path,” Williams said at a news conference on Monday afternoon.
“The numbers we alluded to today are most encouraging as we had predicted with our vaccination rates continually rising.”
With 18,226 tests processed over the past 24 hours, the Ministry of Health is reporting a provincewide positivity rate of 4.3 per cent, down from 6.4 per cent last week.
The number of known, active COVID-19 cases in Ontario is now 12,567, down from 20,038 last Monday.
Provincial health officials say there are currently 731 COVID-19 patients receiving treatment in Ontario hospitals with 617 in intensive care units (ICU), including about 30 patients who were transferred to the province from Manitoba.
Last week, there were 916 people in hospital with COVID-19 and 687 patients in the ICU.
It should be noted that hospital admission data is typically incomplete early in the week as some hospitals do not report information to the ministry over the weekend.
Thirteen more deaths were reported on Monday, bringing the total number of virus-related deaths in Ontario to 8,757.
Of the new cases reported today, 226 are in Toronto, 165 are in Peel Region, 85 are in York Region, 67 are in Durham Region, and 52 are in Hamilton.
The province says 9,082,025 doses of a COVID-19 vaccine have now been administered in Ontario to date.
Starting today, everyone in Ontario who is aged 80 and older is now eligible to book their second shot through the province's booking system.
"We really have to get second doses in quickly. There are variants of concern, for example the variant that was initially discovered in India... it is spreading globally, it is here in Canada, it is here in Ontario, it is here in the GTA," Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious diseases specialist and member of the province's COVID-19 vaccine task force, told CP24 on Monday morning.
"You cannot ignore it. One dose helps but you really need two doses for this and I think it will be really helpful to get second doses in fast."
Last week, the Ford government said every eligible Ontario resident who wants to be vaccinated will be able to receive both doses by the end of the summer.
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.
