Ontario is reporting more than 300 new COVID-19 cases and 13 more deaths on Saturday.
Provincial health officials logged 346 new coronavirus infections today, up from 256 cases on Friday but down from 355 cases reported last Saturday.
Today marks a break in a five-day streak of the province reporting fewer than 300 cases daily.
Ontario reported 296 new cases on Thursday, 255 on Wednesday and 296 on Tuesday.
The seven-day rolling average now stands at 291, compared to 390 seven days ago.
The province’s virus-related death toll stands at 9,114.
Another 503 people recovered from the disease yesterday, resulting in 2,729 active cases across the province.
More than 300 lab-confirmed COVID-19 variants of concern were logged today, with 115 each of the Alpha and Gamma variants, which were first identified in the United Kingdom and Brazil, respectively.
Provincial health officials have said that more cases of the Delta variant, first discovered in India, are spreading throughout the province but since the province is using a slower process to screen for that variant (full genome sequencing) there is often a delay in confirming cases.
Ontario labs processed more than 25,600 tests in the past 24 hours, dropping the positivity rate to 1.1 per cent, compared to 1.3 per cent the previous day, according to the Ministry of Health.
In the Greater Toronto Area, Toronto reported 64 new coronavirus cases, while 34 were logged in Peel Region, 12 in Halton, nine in Durham and six in York Region.
Meanwhile, the region of Waterloo logged 39 cases, unchanged from a day ago.
There are currently 273 people receiving treatment in Ontario hospitals due to the virus.
However, the Ministry of Health says more patients are in intensive care units (286) and that 183 of those patients are breathing with the help of a ventilator.
To date, the province has reported over 543,900 lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 532,074 recoveries since Jan. 2020.
More than 3.9 million people have been fully vaccinated in Ontario by receiving two approved doses of COVID-19 vaccines.
As of Friday evening, over 13.8 million doses of vaccine have been administered across the province since mid-December with a record 256,260 doses yesterday alone.
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.
