Ontario is reporting 1,265 new COVID-19 cases on Monday along with 33 more deaths, as testing rates fell more than 45 per cent as is often observed after a weekend.
Toronto reported 421 new cases as it exits a week-long period where it was transitioning to the province’s main COVID-19 data management system.
Peel Region reported 256 cases, York Region reported 130 cases and Durham Region reported 61 new cases.
Provincial labs processed 28,303 specimens in the past 24 hours, down from 51,658 during the previous period.
The tests generated a positivity rate of at least 4.4 per cent when duplicates and errors are accounted for.
A further 10,693 specimens remain under investigation.
Ontario reported 1,489 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday and 1,388 on Saturday.
The seven-day rolling average of cases now stands at 1,327.
There are now 14,331 lab-confirmed active cases of novel coronavirus infection across Ontario, along with 6,538 deaths and more than 258,000 recoveries.
Of the 33 deaths, eight involved residents of long-term care homes.
A count of local public health units and hospital networks found 1,155 people in hospital due to COVID-19.
Intensive care unit occupancy held steady at 335 while 226 of those people were breathing with the help of a ventilator.
UHN infectious diseases specialist Dr. Isaac Bogoch said that while the hospital capacity picture has improved, it is still not ideal.
“We’re still having about 1,500 new cases per day in Ontario and while the healthcare system is getting a little bit decompressed, we’re still in a precarious place here.”
He said the reopening plan to be announced by the Ford government on Monday must be gradual enough to keep the province from slipping back into the state it found itself in January.
“There is no room for a third wave,” he said.
Meanwhile, the number of cases of highly contagious coronavirus variants of concern flagged through screening continues to increase.
There are now 221 known, fully-confirmed cases of the B.1.1.7, B.1.351 and P.1 variants in Ontario, with all but two of them being B.1.1.7.
There were 175 confirmed variant cases on Sunday morning.
Ontario modelling indicates B.1.1.7 will be the dominant strain in the province by sometime in March.
As the variants continue to be detected, the province’s vaccination campaign continues to hum along, moving far slower than it could, due to shortages of vaccine supply blamed on the federal government.
The province administered another 6,900 shots in the past 24 hours, with a total of 386,171 shots completed since Dec. 15.
More than 106,000 people have completed a two-dose inoculation.
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.
