Ontario reported 348 new cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday a notable decline from the trend of the past week, along with ten new deaths, six of which revealed through an ongoing review of deaths during the pandemic.

Ontario reported 526 new cases of COVID-19 on Monday and 511 on Sunday.

Tuesday’s count took the seven-day rolling average of new cases to 473, up from 469 yesterday.

It’s Ontario’s first sub-500 case day since Aug. 11 when there were 324 new cases detected.

Unvaccinated people continue to make up about 67 per cent of the total new cases detected, despite representing only 28.5 per cent of Ontario’s population.

Partially vaccinated people made up 11 per cent of the case count, while fully vaccinated people made up 22 per cent of the case count.

Provincial labs processed 17,408 tests in the previous period, generating a positivity rate of at least 2.6 per cent.

Alexandra Hilkene, spokesperson for Health Minister Christine Elliott, told CP24 that six of the deaths disclosed Tuesday occurred “more than two months ago” and were revealed as part of an ongoing investigation into excess deaths in the province.

Across the GTA, Toronto reported 85 new cases, Peel reported 45, York Region reported 32 new cases and Durham reported 19.

Halton Region reported 21 new cases and Hamilton reported 34.

Multiple news organizations reported that the Ford government will soon require COVID-19 vaccination or regular rapid testing for hundreds of thousands of healthcare and education workers.

Infectious diseases specialist Dr. Zain Chagla said it is a “slam dunk” for the policy to include the healthcare system, as they regularly deal with people vulnerable to infection, and COVID-positive patients too.

He said it was also key for education workers to be included in the policy.

“Schools are now going to be the largest gatherings of unvaccinated individuals in the province,” he told CP24.

Even if the policy is enacted this week, the soonest a healthcare or education worker convinced to accept the vaccine by its passage could be considered fully immunized would be late September, given existing dose spacing guidelines of 21-28 days provided by vaccine manufacturers.

On the vaccine front, the province says it administered just above 40,000 vaccine doses on Monday, including 11,267 first doses.

The Ministry of Health reported 127 patients were in the ICU due to COVID-19 across the province, a 17 per cent increase from one week ago when there were 109 patients in the ICU.

No more than one of those ICU patients is fully vaccinated, the province says.

Of those, 78 people were breathing with the help of a ventilator.

Local public health units and hospital networks reported a total of 160 people in hospital due to COVID-19 across the province on Tuesday.

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.