Ontario reported 3,670 new COVID-19 cases on Tuesday, as fewer tests were processed, sending positivity to its highest point in a year.

The province also reported 15 additional deaths, brining the confirmed death toll to 7,582.

Ontario reported 4,401 new cases of COVID-19 on Monday and a record of 4,456 on Sunday.

The seven-day rolling average of daily cases now stands at 3,868, up from 3,767 yesterday.

Provincial labs processed 42,167 tests in the past 24 hours, 5,000 fewer than the previous period, generating a positivity rate excluding errors and duplicates of 10.3 per cent.

The Ministry of Health’s records do not include a date where test positivity ever exceeded 10.3 per cent but CP24’s own data indicates test positivity hit 17 per cent at one point in early April, 2020.

UHN infectious disease specialist Dr. Isaac Bogoch said the recent trendline indicates the peak of the third wave has not yet arrived.

“We have not yet crested, we will probably crest two weeks after the Easter long weekend,” he said.

Yesterday, an official with Ontario Health told CP24 that the hospital system could probably sustain up to 900 patients with COVID-19 needing treatment in intensive care at any one time.

On Tuesday, there were 626 patients in intensive care in Ontario hospitals.

If the number in ICU exceeds 900, hospitals may need to invoke an established triage protocol that would reserve care for those most likely to survive illness.

“I really hope we can avoid something like that,” Bogoch said.

The Ministry of Health said there were 1,822 patients in Ontario hospitals with COVID-19 on Tuesday, surpassing all known records from previous waves of coronavirus by more than 100 patients.

One week ago, there were 1,161 people in hospital due to COVID-19.

And a count of data from local public health units and hospital networks on Tuesday found 1,955 people in hospital receiving treatment for COVID-19.

Four-hundred and twenty-two people were breathing with the help of a ventilator.

The province’s total known active caseload rose to 35,840 people, up from 26,568 one week ago.

At the crest of the second wave on Jan. 11, the province’s active caseload was 30,632.

Across the GTA, Toronto reported 1,016 new cases, Peel Region reported 613 new cases and York Region reported 519 new cases.

Halton Region reported 157 new cases, Durham Region reported 196 new cases and Hamilton reported 161 new cases.

The province said more than 95,000 doses of approved COVID-19 vaccines were administered on Monday, bringing the total number of shots injected to 3,310,157 since Dec. 2020.

More than 335,000 people have completed a full two-dose inoculation.

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.