Ontario health officials have confirmed 634 new COVID-19 cases in the province, along with 54 deaths, marking a new daily high in case growth as the total count approaches 13,000.
The case growth tops Monday’s report of 606 cases, while Thursday’s report of deaths is only one shy of the 55 reported last week.
The new deaths include one person between the ages of 20-39, the second person in that age range to die of novel coronavirus infection in Ontario.
That patient’s exact age, gender and whereabouts in the province were not released.
Ontario Health Minister Christine Elliott said her team believes the province has hit the "peak" of daily case growth.
"We continue to see the number of new cases above 500 and we need to see that number go down," she said.
"We are at the peak meaning we have hit maximum number of cases we expect to see in the province but we need to see those cases go down before can we start getting into things like surgeries that have been postponed, opening parts of the economy and opening up parts of society."
More than 500 of the 713 deaths reported to the province so far have occurred in long-term care homes.
All but 38 of the deaths in Ontario from the virus involved people 60 or older.
Ontario's 34 local public health units were together reporting 759 virus-related deaths on Thursday morning.
The discrepancy is due to a lag in reporting all data by the province.
Including 6,680 people who have recovered from the virus and those who have died, Ontario’s total case count has reached 12,879 lab-confirmed cases.
The number of recovered patients increased by 459 on Thursday, the highest growth in recoveries observed to date.
Provincial labs conducted tests on 10,214 specimens, down from the 10,361 conducted on Wednesday and short of the 12,500 tests the province hoped to reach by today.
Test specimens from 6,757 others were under investigation on Thursday.
Premier Doug Ford defended the testing capacity on Thursday, saying the province would hit 14,000 tests processed per day by the end of April.
"Our next tier is 14,000 tests a day and we want to continue on with the 14,000 tests a day and contact tracing.”
“I’m really proud of our health table. I was a little frustrated a few weeks ago and then they did a great job, they picked it right up to 9,000, 10,000 a day and 14,000 by the end of the month so I want to thank them for doing a great job and we are going to continue.”
There are now 233 people in intensive care units across Ontario due to COVID-19, down 10 from Wednesday, and of those 185 are on ventilators, down seven from Wednesday.
Yesterday, Ford said that the province would likely see at least another month of the existing physical distancing and shutdown measures in place today.
Ontario Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. David Williams has repeatedly said he wants to see daily case growth, excluding the ongoing situation in long-term care homes, to fall below 200 new cases per day before relaxing distancing measures.
He said that threshold is where he is confident public health units could rapidly and accurately, test, trace and isolate each case in real time to stop the virus’ spread.
