Ontario reported 3,732 new COVID-19 cases and 23 additional deaths on Sunday, as the province’s active caseload continued its slow, trickling decline and the burden on hospital ICUs stayed flat.

Ontario reported 3,369 new cases on Saturday and 3,887 new cases on Friday.

Labs processed 45,301 test specimens in the past 24 hours, generating a positivity rate of about 8.5 per cent.

The seven-day rolling average of new cases now stands at 3,588, down from 3,618 on Saturday.

There are now 37,200 known active cases across Ontario, down from 40,586 one week ago.

A total of 470,465 cases of COVID-19 have been detected in Ontario through lab PCR testing. Of those, 8,102 cases resulted in death while 425,163 others have recovered.

Across the GTA, Toronto reported 1,198 new cases, Peel reported 797 and York reported 306, while Durham reported 232, Halton reported 129 and Hamilton reported 237.

After disclosing a record 900 patients in hospital ICUs due to COVID-19 on Saturday, the Ministry of Health said that number declined to 895 on Sunday.

Of those, 615 were breathing with the help of a ventilator, down from 637 on Saturday.

A total of 1,961 people were in hospital receiving some form of treatment for COVID-19 on Sunday, but weekend statistics provided by the Ministry are often incomplete.

Ontario Health Executive Vice President Dr. Chris Simpson told CP24 on Sunday that they expect total hospital ICU occupancy to exceed 1,000 in the coming weeks.

"The more likely scenario is that we will likely peak at 1,050 or 1,100 ICU patients," he said. "This presumes that stay at home order will remain in place until May 20."

He said that hospitals could hold on and provide care to all patients under this projection, but that it would "not be a sustainable situation" to continue treating that many COVID-19 patients indefinitely.

The vast majority of new cases detected are screening positive as the B.1.1.7 variant first discovered in the United Kingdom last year, but the number of cases found to be the P.1 variant from Brazil has more than doubled in the past week.

On April 26, 351 examples of the P.1 variant had been detected in the province. By Sunday, that number had grown to 875.

The province said Sunday that it administered more than 76,000 doses of approved coronavirus vaccines on Saturday, bringing the total number of shots administered to more than 5.3 million.

More than 375,000 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.