After four consecutive days of case counts below 1,000, Ontario is reporting 1,038 new COVID-19 infections today and more than 40 virus-related deaths.
Today's case count is up from 847 on Wednesday, 904 on Tuesday, and 964 on Monday but the province has warned that incomplete data from Toronto Public Health may have driven down case counts on previous days.
It should be noted that more than 56,000 tests were processed yesterday, an increase of more than 20,000 from one day prior.
Today's positivity rate is down to 2.2 per cent, on par with the positivity rate recorded in Ontario one week ago, according to the latest data released by the Ministry of Health. The seven-day average of new cases is now 1,016, down from 1,264 at this point last week.
Another 44 deaths were confirmed over the past 24 hours, the highest single-day death toll recorded since Feb. 6. But the seven-day average of daily deaths has now decreased to 23, down from 32 in the previous seven-day period.
There are now 758 COVID-19 patients in hospital, down from 883 last week, provincial data indicates. Intensive care admissions have dropped to 277, a decline of 22 patients from last Thursday.
There are now 10,702 active cases confirmed in the province, down from 12,853 one week ago.
Of the new cases today, 376 are in Toronto, 142 are in Peel Region, and 122 are in York Region.
Toronto, Peel want to delay reopening for at least 2 weeks
Restaurants, gyms, and hair salons have reopened with reduced capacity in most regions of the province following the recent decline in case numbers, deaths, and hospitalizations. Those businesses remain closed in Toronto, Peel Region, York Region, and the North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit due to higher levels of community transmission and a surge in cases involving more transmissible COVID-19 variants.
Medical officers of health in both Toronto and Peel Region are asking the province to keep the city closed for at least another two weeks to see how the variants continue to circulate and what impact reopening schools will have on daily case counts.
York Region's medical officer of health however, believes that his region should enter the red or "control" zone of the province's reopening framework, which would allow many businesses, including restaurants and gyms, to reopen.
Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious diseases expert and member of the province's COVID-19 vaccine task force, told CP24 on Thursday that the variants that are currently here in the province have been known to cause "more explosive outbreaks."
Ontario has now confirmed 359 cases that involve COVID-19 variants and there are hundreds of additional highly probable variant cases that have been flagged by provincial labs.
"We have to respect the variants of concern. We know that the one discovered in the United Kingdom is more transmissible and not only does it have a foothold in Canada and Ontario, it is spreading and it does cause larger, more explosive outbreaks," he said.
"We also know there are other variants of concern, for example, the one discovered in South Africa where perhaps the vaccines might not be as effective against that."
Bogoch said he supports the recommendations made by the medical officers of health in Peel Region and Toronto.
"There will be a time to reopen. It will be sooner or it will be later but there will be a time to reopen and I think the real important point here is when those steps are taken, it's got to be done in a slow and careful manner and I think the other important point is you've got to be able to pivot quickly," he said.
"We've seen how this virus can get out of hand really quickly... I think at the end of the day, nobody wants another lockdown, nobody wants a third wave and we have to appreciate that this is completely preventable."
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.
