Ontario is reporting 1,388 new COVID-19 cases on Saturday, continuing a downward trend of new infections this week.

However, the province has reported inconsistencies with its daily reporting over the past week as a result of Toronto Public Health migrating to the provincial data management system.

On Friday, Ontario logged 1,670 new cases but the province said yesterday’s count is an overestimation due to additional cases reported by Toronto Public Health.

There were 1,563 new infections reported on Thursday, 1,172 on Wednesday and 745 on Tuesday, but the province said that number is an underestimation due to the data migration.

The province’s seven-day rolling average is now 1,479, compared to 1,968 a week ago.

Provincial health officials are also reporting 45 more deaths on Saturday, with 22 among long-term care home residents.

There are currently 224 long-term care homes and 122 retirement homes with an active outbreak of COVID-19.

To date, 3,627 residents in long-term care have died due to COVID-19 infection, representing 56 per cent of all virus-related fatalities in the province.

Ontario’s death toll from the disease caused by the novel coronavirus stands at 6,438.

According to the province’s latest epidemiological summary, 1,796 more people have recovered from the virus.

There are currently 15,269 active cases of COVID-19 across the province.

Since the virus first emerged last January, there have been 276,718 lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 254,966 recoveries across the province.

There are currently 164 lab-confirmed cases of the B.1.1.7 variant, which originated in the U.K., and only one case of the South African B.1.351 variant in Ontario.

These variants of concern first emerged in the province in late December and are considered to be highly contagious.

Most of today's cases continue to be throughout the Greater Toronto Area.

“Locally, there are 455 new cases in Toronto, 288 in Peel and 131 in York Region,” Health Minister Christine Elliott tweeted.

Elsewhere in the GTA, Halton Region logged 42 new cases, a notable drop from 100 a day ago, while Durham Region recorded 46 infections, unchanged from a day ago.

More than 62,300 tests were processed in the past 24-hour span, roughly unchanged from Friday.

According to the Ministry of Health, the province’s positivity rate now stands at 2.6 per cent, continuing a steady decline in the positivity rate since Feb. 1

Hospitalizations have also been dropping consistently, according to provincial health officials.

There are currently at least 1,021 people hospitalized with the virus across the province, down from 1,043 on Friday. Of those hospitalized, 325 are in intensive care units and 228 are breathing with the help of a ventilator.

More than 96,500 people fully vaccinated

As of 8 p.m. on Friday, 96,573 people have been fully vaccinated against the virus in Ontario. Full immunization requires two doses of either the approved Pfizer-BioNtech or Moderna vaccines.

Since mid-December, the province has administered more than 372,600 doses of COVID-19 vaccines.

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.