Ontario health officials reported 243 new COVID-19 cases on Monday, along with 24 new deaths, with no new disclosure of forgotten or misplaced test results that ballooned the weekend’s numbers well above 400 cases per day.

The province now has 2,450 centrally-reported deaths, 24,492 recovered patients and 3,918 active cases remaining, for a grand total of 30,860 infections since the outbreak reached the province in late January.

The province reported more than 400 cases each on Saturday and Sunday but said a large portion of them were cases that were older and errantly not shared with provincial authorities or local public health units when they were first detected.

It’s the lowest number of novel coronavirus infections detected in the province in one day since the end of March.

Health Minister Christine Elliott said she was happy with Monday's numbers but nobody should get complacent.

"Today was a very good day – only 243 new cases – but we were at 400 and 500 just a few weeks ago," she said. "This is the smallest increase we’ve had yet but we can’t expect that to happen every day."

Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. David Williams said all but about 25 of the most recent cases came from the Greater Toronto Area.

The number of new cases outstripped recoveries (240) by three in the past 24 hours.

Of the 2,450 deaths, all but 104 occurred in patients aged 60 or older.

The province’s case fatality rate since the outbreak began now stands at 7.9 per cent.

Of Ontario’s more than 30,000 confirmed cases, five per cent were attributed to travel outside of Canada, 62 per cent were caused by close contact with a previously-confirmed case or a known institutional outbreak, 21 per cent had “no known epidemiological link” and 11 per cent were unknown.

Provincial labs completed 15,357 tests in the past 24 hours, down from more than 19,000 on Sunday.

“While the number of tests is increasing – we are not seeing the number of new cases rise at the same rate,” Associate Chief Medical Officer of Health Barbara Yaffe said Monday, saying the data was encouraging as they are testing more and seeing overall fewer cases.

A further 4,811 test specimens were under investigation on Monday.

The downward trend in hospitalizations continued, with 32 fewer people admitted to hospitals for COVID-19 symptoms on Monday vs. Sunday.

The number of Ontario patients receiving treatment in intensive care units rose by one to 118.

Of those, 81 were breathing with the help of a ventilator, down 11 from Sunday.