Ontario is reporting 513 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, surpassing 500 daily infections for the first time since mid-June.
Thursday’s case count marks a significant day-over-day rise from Wednesday when 324 infections were logged, and is more than two times the 213 cases reported a week ago.
Today also marks the highest-single day tally since June 13 when 530 cases were reported.
The province logged 321 new cases on Tuesday, 325 on Monday and 423 on Sunday.
The seven-day rolling average now stands at 375, up from 332 a day ago and 198 a week ago.
No virus-related deaths were reported in the past 24 hours, leaving the death toll unchanged at 9,412.
Another 256 people recovered from the virus yesterday, resulting in 2,868 known active cases, compared to 1,879 active cases a week ago.
Ontario labs processed nearly 22,900 tests in the past 24 hours, bringing the positivity rate to 2.1 per cent, up from 1.2 per cent a week ago.
Of the new cases reported today, 360 are in unvaccinated individuals, 56 are in partially vaccinated people and 88 are in fully vaccinated people, according to the Ministry of Health.
The cases by vaccination status may not match the daily case count because records with a missing or invalid health card number cannot be linked.
Unvaccinated infections represent 70 per cent of the province’s case count for Thursday, despite making up just under 29 per cent of Ontario’s population.
Toronto logged 105 new cases today, up from 75 a day ago, while 64 infections were reported in Peel Region, 70 in York Region, 44 in Durham and 20 in Halton.
Elsewhere in Southern Ontario, 27 new cases were reported in Windsor-Essex, 17 in Waterloo and 29 in Hamilton.
The ministry said there are 113 patients with COVID-19 in intensive care units (ICU) across Ontario.
Thirty-seven of those ICU patients are unvaccinated, while five are partially vaccinated and two are fully vaccinated, according to the ministry. The vaccination status of the remaining patients is unknown.
There are at least 119 patients in hospitals across Ontario due to the virus, according to data from hospitals and public health units.
To date, there have been 553,962 lab-confirmed coronavirus cases and 541,682 recoveries since Jan. 2020.
About 81 per cent of all eligible Ontarians (12 years and older) have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, while 72 per cent have received two doses and are fully vaccinated.
On Wednesday, the federal government announced that it is working on vaccine passports for international travel.
Infectious diseases specialist Dr. Alon Vaisman spoke to CP24 Thursday morning and said proof of vaccinations is a good idea for travelling and could be useful in high-risk settings.
“It does make sense for people to have something standardized from the Canadian government, for us to use in case we do travel to other nations to prove that we're vaccinated. So all in all, the international concept makes sense to help Canadians travel, and the domestic one really makes sense for certain high-risk, select settings,” he said.
The government said the vaccine passports are expected to be available by early fall.
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.
