Ontario reported more than 700 new COVID-19 cases and 11 more deaths on Friday as the seven-day rolling average and positivity rate continues to decline.

Provincial health officials logged 727 new coronavirus cases today, up from 677 on Thursday but down from 795 a week ago.

Of the latest cases, 447 are among unvaccinated individuals, 56 are partially vaccinated, 170 are fully vaccinated and 54 have an unknown vaccination status.

About 30 per cent of all Ontario residents are currently unvaccinated, including children under the age of 12 who are not eligible for COVID-19 vaccines.

Unvaccinated or partially vaccinated people made up at least 69 per cent of Friday’s case tally.

Today’s case count is up after nearly a week of day-over-day declines.

The province logged 463 new cases on Wednesday, 574 on Tuesday and 610 on Monday.

The seven-day rolling average now stands at 655, compared to 724 a week ago.

Eleven more virus-related deaths were reported today, with three occuring more than a month ago and logged today due to data cleaning, according to the Ministry of Health.

One of the 11 deaths involved a resident of the long-term care system.

The province’s death toll now stands at 9,688.

Another 814 people recovered from the virus yesterday, resulting in 5,747 active cases across the province.

Ontario labs processed 36,855 tests on Thursday, bringing the positivity rate to 1.8 per cent, down from 2.4 per cent a week ago, according to the Ministry of Health.

Of today’s new cases, 143 are among children between zero and 11 years old, 81 are between 12 and 19 years old, 252 are between 20 to 39, 177 are between 40 to 59, 58 are between 60 to 79 and 17 are 80 years old and over.

In the Greater Toronto Area, Toronto logged 144 new coronavirus infections today, while 83 new cases were reported in Peel Region, 54 in York Region, 35 in Durham and 28 in Halton.

Elsewhere in Southern Ontario, 70 new cases were logged in Ottawa, 66 in Hamilton and 33 in Windsor-Essex.

Ontario public schools reported 173 new COVID-19 cases today out of the province’s 4,844 schools.

There are currently 308 COVID-19 patients receiving care in hospitals across the province, with 193 in intensive care units and 134 breathing with the assistance of a ventilator.

Of those patients in ICU, 182 are not fully vaccinated or have an unknown vaccination status and 11 are fully vaccinated.

To date, there have been more than 582,600 lab-confirmed coronavirus cases and 567,200 recoveries in the province since Jan. 2020.

So far, about 85 per cent of eligible Ontarians have received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and about 80 per cent have received two doses and are fully vaccinated.

Infectious diseases specialist Dr. Isaac Bogoch, with Toronto General Hospital, says COVID-19 metrics are heading in the right direction but it’s too soon to let up our guard.

“There's a long fall and a long winter ahead of us. There's a lot of opportunities for this virus to be transmitted with kids in school, with people going back to work, with the weather cooling off and many people gathering indoors rather than outdoors,” he told CP24 Friday morning.

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.