Ontario reported its highest COVID-19 case count in more than six months on Wednesday, with active cases now up about 50 per cent in one week.
Ontario reported 1,429 new cases on Tuesday and 1,536 on Monday.
The seven-day rolling average of new cases now stands at 1,514, up from 1,007 one week ago.
It’s the highest single-day count of cases in Ontario since May 21 when 1,890 cases were detected.
The Ministry of Health says 625 of Wednesday’s cases involve unvaccinated people, 39 involve partially vaccinated people, 1,046 involve fully vaccinated people and the status of 98 others was not known.
The rapid increase in symptomatic infections in vaccinated people can be attributed to waning immunity in a large share of the population that received their second shot four to six months ago and the Omicron variant ability to evade the neutralizing effects of vaccines.
To date, vaccination still appears to reduce risk of hospitalization and ICU admission by 94 and 96 per cent, respectively.
The Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table now estimates more than 30 per cent of all cases in the province are Omicron.
As of Monday, Public Health Ontario says that up to 80 cent of all cases could be Omicron.
They cite a rapid increase in the number of cases now presenting S-Gene Target Failure, a specific genetic mutation not present in the once-dominant Delta variant that was present in both the earlier Alpha variant and Omicron.
Provincial labs processed more than 44,000 test specimens, generating a positivity rate of six per cent, down from 6.6 per cent on Tuesday.
There are now 12,666 known active cases of COVID-19 in the province, up from 8,351 one week ago.
There have been 10,093 confirmed deaths since March 2020, alongside more than 614,000 recoveries.
Forty-eight new deaths due to COVID-19 have been reported in Ontario in the past week.
Across the GTHA, Toronto reported 343 new cases, its highest daily total since May 24.
York Region reported 149 new cases, Peel reported 132 new cases and Durham Region reported 44 new cases.
Halton reported 112 new cases and Hamilton reported 86 new cases.
The Ministry of Health says there are 357 people admitted to hospital for treatment of COVID-19 across Ontario, down 28 from Tuesday.
A count of data produced by public health units and hospital networks said there were 370 people in hospital on Wednesday due to COVID-19.
There are 154 people in intensive care, down eight from Tuesday, and 102 are breathing with the help of a ventilator.
Vaccinations continue to ramp up in the face of Omicron, with 127,613 shots administered on Tuesday.
Of those, 13,684 were first doses, 5,350 were second doses and 108,579 were third doses.
As of today, 82 per cent of all Ontario residents have one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 77 per cent have two shots.
Nearly nine per cent of Ontario residents have received a third shot.
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.
