Ontario reported 928 new COVID-19 cases and nine additional deaths on Tuesday, with labs seeing the highest test positivity rate recorded in the province since the end of May.

The seven-day rolling average of new cases now stands at 975, up from 940 yesterday and 794 one week ago.

Ontario reported 887 new cases on Monday and a multi-month record of 1,184 on Sunday.

The Ministry of Health says that 424 of Tuesday’s cases involved unvaccinated people, 26 involved people with only one dose of a vaccine, 401 involved fully vaccinated people and 77 involved people with unknown vaccination status.

Unvaccinated people make up only 19 per cent of Ontario’s population but form at least 46 per cent of Tuesday’s cases.

Labs processed more than 26,000 test specimens, generating a positivity rate of 3.8 per cent, the highest daily test positivity rate seen in Ontario since May 31.

There have now been 10,036 deaths and 606,800 recoveries from COVID-19 since March 2020, with the province’s known active caseload increasing to 8,479 on Tuesday, from 6,940 one week ago.

Thirty-six people have died of COVID-19 across Ontario in the past week.

Of Tuesday’s cases, 312 or 34 per cent involve people 19 or younger.

The province’s Science Advisory Table released an updated projection of COVID-19 case numbers that suggests Ontario could see 2,000 cases per day by mid-January if current trends continue and the Omicron variant proves to be both more transmissible and able to evade some of the immunity provided by mRNA vaccines.

It also appears likely the province’s vaccine passport system will be in place longer than first thought, as the province’s health minister said Monday the rules will be in place for at least the next “several months” and would not start to recede in January as was first announced.

Their prediction will come as the province sees its first locally-transmitted cases of the Omicron (B.1.1.529) coronavirus variant first discovered by South African scientists last month.

The Ministry of Health said there were 340 people in hospital due to COVID-19 across the province on Tuesday, the highest hospital occupancy seen since mid-September.

Of those, 165 were in intensive care and 95 were breathing with the help of a ventilator.

Across the GTHA, Toronto reported 163 new cases, York Region reported 84 new cases, Peel reported 48 new cases and Halton Region reported 25 new cases.

Durham Region reported 32 new cases and Hamilton reported 50 new cases.

Ontario administered more than 60,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses on Monday.

Of those, 15,629 were first doses, 5,002 were second doses and nearly 40,000 were third doses.

Across all age groups, 81 per cent of Ontario residents have at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, 77 per cent have two doses and nearly six per cent have a third dose. 

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.