Ontario reported 934 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday and 10 new deaths but officials say that the total was partially inflated by about 100 cases that were belatedly added to the provincial database.

Of the 934 new cases, nearly half (420) were reported in Toronto but on Thursday afternoon, the city’s Medical Officer of Health Dr. Eileen de Villa confirmed that 100 of them should have been included in previous days counts.

She said that the mix-up is the result of a number of staff illnesses and the deployment of other staff for training on a new provincial software system for case and contact management.

This batching of data entry accounts for approximately 100 cases, which, if not included, would have been consistent with the level of recent case counts, in the low to mid-300 range,” she said in a statement. “We expect further occasional impacts on data are possible as the new system is implemented.

More than 35,600 tests were processed in the past 24 hours, up from 30,000 completed in the previous period.

The positivity rate fell to at least 2.62 per cent, from at least 2.77 per cent on Wednesday.

Infectious diseases expert Dr. Isaac Bogoch told CP24 the province continues to fail to test enough people for him to be confident that all cases are being documented.

“It is kind of tough to know because there are limited numbers of tests,” he said. “We know we should be doing 50,000 tests per day but we’re probably doing about 25,000 to 33,000 tests per day so it’s not entirely clear what the ground truth is.

The province reported 834 new cases on Wednesday, 827 cases on Tuesday, 851 cases on Monday and 1,046 cases on Sunday.

There are now 7,578 active cases of infection in Ontario, up from 6,390 one week ago.

There have been 3,118 centrally confirmed deaths and 63,123 recoveries since Jan. 25.

Of the ten deaths reported on Thursday, five involved residents of long-term care homes.

Elsewhere in the GTA, Peel Region reported 169 new cases, York Region reported 95, Halton Region reported 35, Durham Region reported 19 and Hamilton reported 28.

The province says 322 people were in hospital being treated for COVID-19 symptoms, but a count of data from local public health units and hospitals found 337 people were in hospital, the same number as was found on Wednesday.

Of those, at least 77 were in intensive care and 52 were breathing with the help of ventilator.