Ontario reported 4,212 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday and 32 deaths, as some early signs hinted case growth may be slowing.

Ontario reported 3,469 new COVID-19 cases and 22 deaths on Tuesday, along with 4,447 new cases on Monday and 4,250 on Sunday.

The province’s rolling seven day average of new cases now stands at 4,326, up from 4,319 yesterday.

Ontario’s active caseload actually fell by 24 cases to 42,917, and test positivity fell to its lowest point in five days, at 7.9 per cent.

Provincial labs processed 51,877 test specimens and another 32,119 are under investigation.

Across the GTA, Toronto reported 1,249 new cases, Peel reported 771, York Region reported 386 and Durham reported 214 new cases.

Elsewhere, Halton reported 168 new cases and Hamilton reported 276.

Yesterday, Toronto and Peel moved to allow health inspectors to close any workplace with five or more COVID-19 cases for up to 10 days, in response to rising numbers of COVID-19 outbreaks at essential workplaces.

The Ford government hinted, after nearly a year of refusals that it may bring in paid sick leave for essential workers.

UHN infectious diseases specialist Dr. Isaac Bogoch said that was absolutely the right move.

“Call it whatever you want but you have to have some incentives so that you don’t go in to work and infect other people. You have to be able to isolate for a period of 10 to 14 days.”

“It’s the ethical thing to do and it will end the pandemic sooner.”

There have now been 7,789 centrally-confirmed coronavirus deaths in the province since March 2020.

As of April 15, Public Health Ontario says 90 per cent of all samples screened come back positive for one of three variants of concern known to be circulating in the province, the vast majority being B.1.1.7.

The Ministry of Health reported that there were 2,335 people in hospital receiving treatment for COVID-19 in Ontario hospitals, with 790 patients in intensive care.

Of those, 566 are breathing with the help of a ventilator. All three hospital use indicators are at their highest point since the pandemic began.

Public health units and hospital networks reported an even greater number of coronavirus patients than the ministry on Wednesday, saying there were 2,539 patients requiring treatment.

Reflecting the surge in hospitalizations, ORNGE Air Ambulance service said it had received a modified paramedic transport bus so it could cart multiple ICU patients between hospitals at a time.

The province said Wednesday that it set a new record for administering COVID-19 vaccines on Tuesday, with 136,695 shots in arms.

More than 4.1 million Ontarians have now received at least one dose of an approved COVID-19 vaccine and more than 349,000 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.