Ontario is reporting 409 new COVID-19 cases and one new death on Friday, the exact same number as Thursday, with Toronto alone now accounting for half of the province's case growth.

Ontario reported 409 COVID-19 cases on Thursday, along with 335 on Wednesday and 478 on Tuesday.

"Locally, there are 204 new cases in Toronto with 66 in Peel and 40 in Ottawa," Health Minister Christine Elliott wrote on Twitter. "(Sixty-five per cent) of today’s cases are in people under the age of 40."

She said provincial labs processed 41,800 tests in the past 24 hours, a new provincial record as she and public health officials vow to raise testing rates to 50,000 per day in the coming weeks.

There were more than 65,000 test specimens still awaiting analysis on Friday, the highest backlog of tests recorded in Ontario since the outbreak began.

Speaking on Friday afternoon, neither Premier Doug Ford or Elliott would call the recent surge a "second wave," deferring instead to the opinion of Chief Medical Officer Dr. David Williams.

His deputy, Associate Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Barbara Yaffe has characterized the current situation as a "wave" of infection that will require new efforts to stop.

UHN Epidemiologist Dr. Isaac Bogoch said that the fact that infections are still largely concentrated in younger people will mean less strain on the healthcare system, for now.

"We know that people in their 20s who get COVID-19 in general don’t get that sick especially compared to older age groups," he told CP24 on Friday. "They are much less likely to get hospitalized and fortunately much less likely to succumb to the illness."

"But on the other hand we know that this is such a contagious infection, we know that it does not stay within one age group for long."

There are now 3,899 active cases of novel coronavirus infection in the province, up from 2,427 last week.

A total of 2,837 people have died of the virus since March and 42,169 people have made clinical recoveries from infection.

Apart from Peel, Toronto and Ottawa, Halton Region reported 12 new cases, Durham Region also reported 12 new cases and York Region reported 33 new cases.

Ontario officials said 87 people were in hospital for treatment of COVID-19 symptoms on Friday, but a count of data from public health units and select hospitals found 110 people were being treated.

Of those, at least 25 patients were in intensive care and 13 of them were breathing with the help of a ventilator.

Ford said Friday that his government will release several detailed modelling scenarios about the future path of the virus in the province "next week."