Provincial health officials are reporting just over 500 new COVID-19 cases and 15 more deaths on Saturday.

Ontario logged 502 coronavirus cases today, marking the third straight day where the daily case count topped 500.

The province reported 574 new cases on Friday, 590 cases on Thursday, and 411 on Wednesday.

The seven-day rolling average now stands at 533, down from 844 a week ago.

Just over 24,000 tests were processed in the past 24 hours, down from 28,949 the previous day.

The drop in testing contributed to a slight rise in the province’s positivity rate to 2.1 per cent, compared to two per cent on Friday.

Ontario’s virus-related death toll stands at 8,950.

Another 830 people recovered from the virus, resulting in 5,841 active cases across the province.

More than 1,400 lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19 variants of concern were logged on Saturday, with most being the Alpha variant, also known as B.1.1.7.

In the Greater Toronto Area, Toronto reported 89 new coronavirus cases, while 71 were logged in Peel Region, 37 in York Region, 31 in Durham Region and 14 in Halton.

Hospitalizations saw a notable decline compared to Friday with 447 patients currently receiving treatment, down from 489 the previous day.

Of those in hospital, 422 are in intensive care units and 277 are breathing with the assistance of a ventilator.

To date, more than 539,150 lab-confirmed coronavirus cases and 524,362 recoveries have been reported across the province since Jan. 2020.

More than 11 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been administered across the province, with over 195,000 shots into arms yesterday alone.

More than 1.6 million people in Ontario have been fully vaccinated against the disease since mid-December. Two doses of available vaccines in Ontario are needed for full immunization.

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.