Ontario is reporting close to 3,300 new cases of COVID-19 as virus-related hospitalizations surpass 1,300 in the province.

Provincial health officials logged 3,270 new cases of the disease caused by the novel coronavirus today, up from the 2,964 confirmed on Sunday but down from the record 3,363 reported last week.

Today's daily case count is up substantially from the 1,939 recorded one week ago and the seven-day average of new infections now stands at 2,982, up from 2,186 last week.

With just over 39,000 tests completed over the past 24 hours, the test positivity rate today is 9.7 per cent provincewide, a tie for the highest positivity rate reported in Ontario during the second wave of the pandemic.

Of the new cases confirmed today, 917 are in Toronto, 581 are in Peel Region, 389 are in York Region, 246 are in Windsor-Essex County, and 131 are in Ottawa.

Twenty-nine more virus-related deaths were confirmed in Ontario today, including 14 long-term care residents, bringing total number of deaths in the province to 4,679.

According to the latest epidemiological summary released by provincial health officials, there are now 233 long-term care facilities in Ontario that are dealing with an outbreak of COVID-19, 38 more than the number reported seven days ago.

At Scarborough long-term care home Tendercare Living Centre, 62 residents have died after contracting COVID-19 following an outbreak that began at the facility last month. St. George Care Community, a long-term care home in Toronto's Annex neighbourhood, now has 94 confirmed cases among its residents.

Today's data from the province reveals that COVID-19 related hospitalizations in the province have also jumped to at least 1,190, nearly 200 more than the number reported on Sunday. Intensive care admissions rose slightly to 333 but the number of patients breathing with the assistance of a ventilator dropped to 194, down from 228 one day earlier.

Provincial data typically lags behind information reported by individual local public health units and according to the province's 34 PHUs, the number of virus-related hospitalizations across Ontario has now surpassed 1,300.

'Care is being rationed'

Infectious diseases specialist Dr. Isaac Bogoch said the surge in cases is creating a "very big challenge" for hospitals in the province.

"It's really an unfortunate place to be right now. I think that perhaps (a) mid-to-late January peak might be realized and clearly it is just not sustainable to have over 3,000 new cases per day," he told CP24 on Monday morning.

"We just know that many of those individuals will ultimately need to seek health care and many of those seeking health care will need hospitalization, and many of those needing hospitalization will land in an ICU and sadly will succumb to this illness."

Bogoch said intensive care units are at capacity in many parts of the Greater Toronto Area.

"Care is being rationed. You cannot provide the same level of care to the community as we did before this giant swell in cases because there are just so many people coming in with COVID-19," he said.

"And of course the holiday season isn't going to make anything easier. There were probably innumerable small gatherings over the course of the holiday break. We know there is going to be some excess transmission as a result of that."

A provincewide lockdown implemented on Boxing Day will remain in effect for southern parts of the province until at least Jan. 23 in an effort to curb the spread of the virus and protect the health-care system.

"How much of that (the lockdown) is going to counterbalance a swell in cases that we are expected to see over the course of Christmas and New Years? I'm not entirely sure," Bogch said. "Regardless, it is going to be a very big challenge for the hospitals in Ontario."

Dr. David Williams, Ontario's chief medical officer of health, said the province is still waiting to see what impact the lockdown has had on case growth.

"December we saw alone some of the highest numbers on a daily basis that we've seen and we are hoping in January we will start to turn that around," Williams told reporters at a news conference on Monday afternoon. 

"We are hoping to see some abatement of those numbers as we move into the latter part of this week and we are into the post-lockdown initiation time."

Ontario has now confirmed three more cases of the new COVID-19 variant first detected in the United Kingdom, bringing the total number of cases of the variant in the province to six.

Dr. Barbara Yaffe, Ontario's associate chief medical officer of health, said all three of the new cases, which involve residents of York Region, Peel Region, and Toronto, had a recent travel history or were a close contact of someone who recently travelled outside the country.

New cases in the GTHA:

Toronto: 917

Peel Region: 581

York Region: 389

Durham Region: 122

Halton Region: 70

Hamilton: 94