Ontario’s daily COVID-19 case count remains above 500 today for the fifth consecutive day as the province’s test positivity rate rises to a level not seen since mid-June.
Ontario health officials reported 526 new infections today, up from 511 on Sunday and 325 one week ago.
The rolling seven-day average of new cases continues to climb, reaching 469 today, up from 440 on Sunday and 283 last Monday.
For the second consecutive day, no new virus-related deaths were confirmed in Ontario.
With just 15,784 tests processed over the past 24 hours, the Ministry of Health is reporting a provincewide test positivity rate of 2.7 per cent, up from 2.3 per cent last week and the highest that number has been since June 14.
According to the province, there are currently 119 people in intensive care with COVID-19 in Ontario, up from 113 last Monday.
Of the new cases reported today, 353 cases are in unvaccinated individuals, 60 are in partially vaccinated people, and the remaining 113 are in fully vaccinated people.
Dr. Zain Chagla, an infectious diseases specialist, told CP24 on Monday that while there are some breakthrough infections being reported, the majority are in people who are unvaccinated.
“I think we are going to see what we’ve seen in other places, in the United Kingdom and Israel, where we see hospitalizations, they are not as bad as prior waves but it is certainly enough to get the health-care system uncomfortable,” he said.
“The big point here is this is very different than other waves. There is a viable solution to preserve our health-care system, to keep people from dying. There were zero people in the ICU yesterday that were fully vaccinated and so again, it shows how well these vaccines work.”
To date, Ontario has administered 20,213,876 vaccine doses and 81.5 per cent of Ontarians aged 12 and up have received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine while 73.5 per cent are fully immunized.
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.
