Ontario reported more than 5,800 new COVID-19 cases over the past two days and broke another single-day record on Saturday.

The province logged 3,363 new infections today and 2,476 cases on New Year’s Day.

Saturday’s case count beats the previous record of 3,328 cases logged on New Year’s Eve.

The province released data for the past 48 hours on Saturday as numbers were not released yesterday due to the holiday.

The province recorded nearly 100 fatalities over the past two days with 44 deaths were recorded on Saturday and 51 on Friday, bringing the death toll to 4,625.

Of the fatalities over the past two days, 37 were among long-term care home residents.

Although seniors over the age of 80 account for more than 3,000 of the 4,600-plus fatalities in Ontario, this group represents only seven per cent of cases recorded in the province.

Meanwhile, individuals between the ages of 20 and 39 represent 36 per cent of all COVID-19 cases in the province, while only 18 people in this age group have died from the virus.

There are currently 188 long-term care homes with an active outbreak of the virus.

The latest numbers represent a steady rise in cases that was observed earlier this week. On Wednesday, the province recorded 2,923 new infections and 2,553 cases on Tuesday.

The Greater Toronto Area continues to account for most of the new cases on Saturday.

“Today, there are 713 new cases in Peel, 700 in Toronto, 395 in York Region, 226 in Windsor-Essex County and 171 in Hamilton,” Health Minister Christine Elliott tweeted.

It should be noted that due to a data issue the cases for Toronto were under reported on Dec. 31 and over reported on Jan. 1., the Ministry of Health said in a statement.

According to the ministry’s epidemiological summaries for the past two days, Toronto Public Health (TPH) logged 499 new cases on Friday and 700 on Saturday.

In an email to CP24, TPH said it under reported approximately 130 cases on Dec. 31 and did not report data as a result of the statutory holiday on Jan. 1. TPH said it will be publishing data again on Jan. 3.

Meanwhile, Peel Region broke a single-day record for cases on Saturday, beating the previous record of 592 infections recorded on Dec. 3.

Elsewhere in the GTA, Durham Region recorded 115 cases on Saturday, while Halton recorded 152.

With the latest numbers, the seven-day rolling average now stands at 2,655 compared to 2,256 a week ago.

There are currently 22,847 active cases of the disease in the province and 4,514 people have recovered over the past two days.

To date, there have been nearly 188,000 cases of the novel coronavirus in the province since January and more than 160,500 recoveries.

Province breaks testing record with more than 70,000 tests

Over the past two days, the province has processed nearly 132,000 tests with a record 70,570 on Saturday.

The previous record was reported on Dec. 20 when 69,412 tests were conducted.

The province’s positivity rate jumped to six per cent compared to 3.8 per cent a week ago, according to provincial data, potentially due to increase in daily testing.

The per cent positivity has been on an upward trend this month as daily cases tip over the 3,000 mark.

According to provincial health officials, Ontario marked a per cent positivity rate of 9.7 per cent on Tuesday, the highest daily rate seen in the second wave of the pandemic.

COVID-19 in hospitals

Hospitals continue to cope with an overwhelming number of COVID-19 patients while trying to effectively treat all patients in the health-care system.

On Saturday, the province said 1,003 people are in hospitals with the virus but that number is an underrepresentation as more than 10 per cent of hospitals did not submit data, according to the Ministry of Health.

“We anticipate the number of hospitalized patients may increase when reporting compliance increases,” read a statement.

Meanwhile, the province said 1,260 people were hospitalized with the virus on Friday, compared to 1,235 on Thursday.

As of Saturday, 322 people with the virus are in intensive care units across the province and 220 are breathing with the help of a ventilator.