Ontario reports 1,571 new COVID-19 infections, 10 more deaths

Provincial health officials reported more than 1,500 new COVID-19 infections and 10 more deaths on Wednesday, as hospitalizations continue to rise amid a third wave of the pandemic.

Ontario logged 1,571 new cases of the novel coronavirus today, a slight increase from 1,546 a day ago.

The province reported 1,699 cases on Monday, 1,791 on Sunday and 1,829 on Saturday.

The seven-day rolling average now stands at 1,676, compared to 1,361 seven days ago.

Provincial health officials also reported 10 more deaths on Wednesday, raising the province’s virus-related death toll to 7,263.

There were no deaths reported among long-term care home residents in the past 24 hours.

Meanwhile, another 1,531 people recovered from the disease, resulting in 15,047 active cases across the province.

Provincial labs confirmed 43 more cases of highly contagious variants of concern on Wednesday. Thirty are the B.1.1.7 variant, three are the B.1.351 variant and 10 are the P.1 variant.

Another 909 cases that have screened positive for a variant are undergoing whole genome sequencing to identify their lineage, bringing the total number of cases awaiting sequencing to 14,803.

To date, there have been at least 1,486 lab-confirmed cases of variants in Ontario.

Ontario labs processed nearly 52,000 tests in the past 24 hours, a notable increase from 32,556 tests conducted the previous day.

The rise in testing contributed to a drop in the province’s positivity rate to 3.8 per cent, down from 5.7 per cent a day ago, according to the Ministry of Health.

Most of the latest COVID-19 cases continue to be in the Greater Toronto Area.

The Ministry of Health reported 459 new cases in Toronto, 309 in Peel Region, 143 in York Region, 28 in Halton and 86 in Durham. All five of these public health units saw a day-over-day decrease in infections.

Out of Ontario’s 34 public health units, 10 reported 30 or more cases on Wednesday.

Virus-related hospitalizations continue to rise. There are currently 893 people hospitalized due to COVID-19 infection across the province, up from 868 a day ago, according to the Ministry of Health.

Of those hospitalized, 333 are in intensive care units (ICU) and 210 are breathing with the assistance of ventilators.

However, UHN critical care physician Dr. Kali Barrett tweeted that a total of 383 patients are in ICUs across the province and 229 are on ventilators, according to the latest data from Critical Care Services Ontario.

To date, there have been nearly 333,700 lab-confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus and 311,380 recoveries since the pandemic began over a year ago.

More than 302,600 people have been fully vaccinated in Ontario since mid-December.

As of Tuesday evening, over 1.6 million doses of vaccines have been administered across the province, with more than 72,400 yesterday alone.

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.