Ontario officials reported 1,969 new COVID-19 cases on Monday and 36 new deaths, but said some of Monday’s cases are due to ongoing data cleanup efforts at Toronto Public Health.

Ontario reported 1,848 cases on Sunday, 2,063 on Saturday and 1,837 on Friday.

An unspecified number of Monday’s cases were due to data cleanup by Toronto Public Health and reflected cases detected earlier in the pandemic.

"Locally, there are 886 new cases in Toronto, 330 in Peel and 128 in York Region," Health Minister Christine Elliott wrote on Twitter.

The seven-day average of new cases stood at 1,889 on Monday.

Ontario labs processed 30,359 test specimens in the past 24 hours, down from 49,352 during the previous period.

As a result, test positivity when accounting for errors and duplicate tests rose to at least 5.2 per cent.

Nineteen of the 36 deaths disclosed on Monday involved residents of long-term care.

There have now been 6,224 deaths due to COVID-19 since March, along with 244,939 recoveries.

Another 19,017 cases remained active on Monday, down 24,153 one week ago.

Hospitalizations held steady on Monday following steep improvements over the past week.

The province says there are 1,158 people in hospital for COVID-19 today, one fewer than Sunday, with 354 people in intensive care and 260 breathing with the help of a ventilator.

Meanwhile, hospital networks and local public health units said there were 1,332 COVID-19 patients in Ontario hospitals on Monday.

Students in Ottawa and London returned to class for the first time in six weeks today.

12 new cases of UK coronavirus variant B.1.1.7 detected in the province

Provincial labs have confirmed 12 additional examples of the highly-contagious B.1.1.7 coronavirus variant from cases in Ontario, raising the total confirmed through genomic sequencing to 69, from 57 on Sunday.

Thirty-nine of the confirmed variant cases are in York Region and at least 10 are in Simcoe-Muskoka.

The mutation of the virus makes it approximately 50 per cent more transmissible.

It binds more easily with human cells than the so-called “wild” variants circulating in Ontario.

The head of Ontario’s COVID-19 Science Table says B.1.1.7 will be the dominant strain in the province by sometime in March.

Elsewhere in the GTA, Durham Region reported 90 new cases, Simcoe-Muskoka reported 39 new cases, Halton reported 55 more cases and Hamilton reported 39 cases.

Due to ongoing and widely-publicized delivery issues, Ontario's new COVID-19 vaccinations slowed to a trickle over the weekend.

The province says it administered 2,256 new COVID-19 vaccine shots in the past 24 hours, for a total of 341,900 shots administered.

More than 70,000 people have completed the two-dose regimen of vaccination.