Ontario reported more than 1,400 new COVID-19 cases and five more virus-related deaths on Tuesday as the test positivity rate hit a high not seen in nearly seven months.
Another 1,429 new coronavirus infections were reported today, down from 1,536 on Monday but up from 928 a week ago.
With case counts on the rise over the past month, the seven-day rolling average continues to climb and hit 1,400 today, compared to 975 a week ago.
Today marks the highest the average has been since May 27 when it was 1,441.
Among the latest cases, 809 of the individuals are fully vaccinated, 493 are unvaccinated, 33 are partially vaccinated and 94 have an unknown vaccination status.
To date, more than 85 per cent of Ontarians five years and older have received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 80 per cent have received two doses and are considered fully vaccinated.
One year ago today, a group of long-term care home employees in Toronto became the first people to receive the COVID-19 vaccine in the county.
Another 930 people recovered from the virus in the past 24 hours, resulting in 12,032 active cases across the province.
The five deaths reported today occured in the last month raising the virus-related death toll to 10,084, according to the Ministry of Health.
The ministry says Ontario labs processed 33,400 tests yesterday, producing a positivity rate of 6.6 per cent- the highest the positivity rate has been since May 18 when it was 7.6 per cent.
This time a week ago the positivity rate was 3.8 per cent.
In the Greater Toronto Area, 239 new cases were reported in Toronto, 103 in Peel Region, 128 in York, 74 in Durham and 58 in Halton.
Elsewhere in Ontario, Ottawa reported 120 new cases, while 85 were logged in Kingston, Frontenac and Lennox and Addington, 84 in Middlesex-London and 68 in Simcoe Muskoka.
There are currently 385 people in Ontario hospitals with the virus and 162 in intensive care units, the ministry says.
Health Minister Christine Elliott says 131 of the ICU patients are not fully vaccinated or have an unknown vaccination status and 31 are fully vaccinated.
Yesterday, the scientific director of Ontario’s COVID-19 Science Advisory Table said Omicron is expected to become the dominant strain in Ontario this week.
"This is historical. This is unprecedented. This week Omicron will become the dominant variant in the province... People cannot imagine the sheer scale of what we are talking about here. It is really challenging," Dr. Peter Jüni told CP24.
The table estimates that the doubling time for Omicron in Ontario is every three days and that the effective reproductive (RT) number is 4.1, meaning that every 100 new cases of Omicron will generate 410 secondary infections. All COVID-19 variants combined have an RT value of 1.32.
To date, there have been 635,112 lab-confirmed coronavirus cases and 612,996 recoveries in Ontario since Jan. 2020.
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.
