Provincial health officials are reporting more than 1,200 new COVID-19 cases on Saturday with more than 57,000 tests processed in the past 24 hours.

Ontario logged 1,228 new COVID-19 infections today, marking the third straight day of daily case counts topping 1,000.

The province logged 1,150 new infections on Friday, 1,038 on Thursday and 847 on Wednesday.

The seven-day rolling average of new cases now stands at 1,016, compared to 1,167 a week ago.

Ontario is also reporting 28 more deaths due to COVID-19 infection, with 11 among long-term care home residents.

To date, 3,849 residents in long-term care homes have died with the disease, representing 56 per cent of the 6,848 Ontarians that have died with COVID-19.

According to the province’s latest epidemiological summary, 1,313 more people have recovered from the novel coronavirus, resulting in 10,437 active cases of COVID-19 across the province.

Most of Saturday’s new cases continue to be throughout hot spots in the Greater Toronto Area.

The Ministry of Health reported 331 new cases in Toronto, 228 in Peel Region and 132 in York Region.

Elsewhere in the GTA, Durham Region logged 47 new infections and Halton Region reported 40 new cases.

Meanwhile, Hamilton reported 86 new infections, a notable rise from 43 cases a day ago.

Provincial health officials are reporting one additional lab-confirmed case of the B.1.1.7 COVID-19 variant of concern, which was first identified in the United Kingdom.

To date, there have been 386 confirmed cases of the U.K. variant in Ontario, nine cases of B.1.351, which first originated in South Africa, and one case of the P.1 variant, which was first found in Brazil.

Ontario labs processed 57,194 tests yesterday, down from more than 65,000 tests the previous day.

Over 30,000 test specimens are still under investigation.

According to the Ministry of Health, the province’s positivity rate remained flat at 2.2 per cent, compared to 2.1 per cent on Friday.

COVID-19 hospitalizations saw a slight day-over-day increase across the province.

In the last 24-hour span, there were a total of 699 people in Ontario hospitals due to COVID-19 infection, up from 689 on Friday.

Of those hospitalized, 263 are in intensive care units and 181 are breathing with the help of a ventilator.

Since the first case of the novel coronavirus emerged in Ontario last January, there have been nearly 292,000 cases and more than 274,700 resolved cases.

The latest numbers come as York Region prepares to head into the red “control” zone of the province’s reopening framework on Monday.

The red category allows indoor dining to resume and gyms and hair salons to reopen with reduced capacity.

Meanwhile, Toronto and Peel Region will remain under a stay-at-home order until at least March 8.

More than 229,000 people fully vaccinated

As of 8 p.m. on Friday, more than 540,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered across the province.

Two doses of either the approved Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines administered a few weeks apart are needed for full immunization.

Since mid-December, 229,151 people have been fully vaccinated across Ontario.

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.