Ontario reported more than 1,100 new COVID-19 cases and 19 additional deaths on Thursday, as the positivity rate marked a new low not seen since March.
Provincial health officials logged 1,135 new coronavirus cases, up from 1,095 on Wednesday, but continuing a downward trend in new infections recorded over the past few weeks.
Ontario reported 1,039 new cases on Tuesday, 1,446 on Monday and 1,691 on Sunday.
The seven-day rolling average is now 1,441, compared to 2,131 seven days ago.
Of the latest fatalities, two people were between 20 and 39 years-old, six were between 40 and 59, seven were between 60 and 79 and four were 80 years and older. Ontario’s virus-related death toll stands at 8,697.
Ontario labs processed more than 37,700 tests in the past 24 hours, up from 24,008 tests the previous day.
Despite a day-over-day rise in testing, the province’s positivity rate dropped to at least 3.6 per cent today, down from 5.3 per cent on Wednesday. Today’s positivity rate is the lowest recorded since March 20 when the rate was also 3.6 per cent.
Another 2,302 people recovered from the disease in the past 24-hour period, resulting in 16,541 active cases across the province.
The province also reported 1,270 lab-confirmed COVID-19 variants of concern today with over 1,200 being the dominant B.1.1.7 variant.
Meanwhile, the province has ramped up testing and screening of another variant of concern, the B.1617 variant, which appears to be spreading rapidly in the province. On Thursday, Public Health Ontario told CP24 that from May 12 to 19 the number of known positive cases of the B.1.617 variant, which was first identified in India, grew from 45 to 260, a nearly six-fold increase.
On Thursday afternoon, Ontario's chief medical officer of health said 322 cases of the B.1.617 variant have been confirmed in Ontario to date.
In the Greater Toronto Area, Toronto logged 316 COVID-19 cases today, up from 257 a day ago, while 271 new infections were reported in Peel Region, 75 in York Region, 25 in Durham Region and 46 in Halton Region.
Virus-related hospitalizations remained relatively unchanged day-over-day with 1,072 patients receiving treatment in Ontario hospitals.
The number of patients in intensive care dropped by 22 from Wednesday with 650 patients in ICUs. Of those in ICUs, 452 were breathing with the assistance of a ventilator.
Eighteen of the people in the ICU are patients who have been transferred from Manitoba.
To date, the province has reported over 527,180 lab-confirmed coronavirus cases and 501,942 recoveries since the first infection was identified in January 2020.
"Trends are continuing in the right direction, and our situation in Ontario is improving," Ontario's Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. David Williams said Thursday.
"If we keep going in this good direction, we will soon be able to look at entering in our framework and moving ahead on that."
The province has said that it expects to enter Stage 1 of its reopening plan, which would allow outdoor dining to resume and some non-essential retail to reopen, on June 14. The Ford government has indicated that the province can't move to this stage until at least two weeks after 60 per cent of Ontarians have received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
"We also are looking at other metrics in there, which includes the hospital data, the positivity rates and different factors," Williams said, adding that he hopes to see daily case counts drop to around 500 or 600 new infections per day."
As of Wednesday evening, more than 8.5 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been administered across the province since mid-December.
Over 594,800 people have been fully vaccinated in Ontario. Two doses of vaccines that are currently administered in the province are needed for full immunization.
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.
