Ontario is reporting more than 500 new cases of COVID-19 as case counts continue to rise exponentially, albeit at a reduced rate compared to what the province had been seeing as recently as last week.
The Ministry of Health says that there were 531 new cases of the disease caused by the novel coronavirus confirmed on Wednesday, up from 485 one day prior.
The ministry also reported another 17 deaths, however 15 of them occurred months ago and were discovered through a data cleanup.
The rolling seven-day average of new cases has risen 50 per cent over the last week and now stands at 498.
That means that cases are doubling every two weeks. At this time last week, the rolling seven-day average was up 89 per cent and Ontario’s science table was estimating that cases were doubling every nine days.
The apparent slowing of the rate of growth, however, does not mean that Ontario is out of the woods.
In fact right now the science table still pegs the province’s reproductive number at 1.24, which is higher than that metric ever reached during the third wave of the pandemic in the spring.
That means that for every 100 people who contract COVID-19, the virus will be passed on to approximately 124 additional people.
"We are preparing aggressively for the fall," Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Kieran Moore said during a press conference earlier this week. "I am sorry to say, I think it's going to be a difficult fall and winter."
More than 100 new cases in Toronto
Of the latest cases 116 are in Toronto, 63 are in Peel Region, 62 are in York Region, 46 are in Hamilton, 29 are in Durham Region and 17 are in Halton Region.
About 85 per cent of the cases (456) occurred in individuals who were either not fully vaccinated or for whom their vaccination status was unknown while the remaining cases (75) were in fully vaccinated individuals.
Of the 176 people in hospital outside of the ICU, only 13 are fully vaccinated.
However, for the second day in a row the ministry is not providing updated intensive care numbers due to a technical glitch.
“These vaccines are really, really good, but they're not perfect. These aren't like some magical bulletproof vest that you wear that's going to shield you from all COVID-19 infections,” infectious disease specialist Dr. Issac Bogoch warned during an interview with CP24 on Thursday morning, prior to the release of the latest numbers. “It’s very clear, even from the original clinical trial well before Delta variant occurred, that people could get vaccinated and still get this infection. The risk is just lower. There's other things that you can do to make a safer indoor space, like better ventilation, mask wearing, limiting the number of people that are inside at any given time. But if you take away any one of those layers of protection, you're adding incremental risks.”
The latest positive cases come on 26,213 tests, pointing to a positivity rate of 2.4 per cent.
That is in line with the average positivity rate over the last seven days (2.45 per cent) but represents an increase from this time last week when the seven-day average was 1.85 per cent.
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.
