Ontario is reporting a record high of more than 13,800 new COVID-19 cases as hospitalizations continue to rise due to the rapidly spreading Omicron variant.

The province logged 13,807 new coronavirus cases today, beating yesterday’s record of 10,436 cases.

Over the past few days, 9,826 new COVID-19 cases were logged on Sunday, 9,418 on Monday, and 8,825 on Tuesday.

The seven-day rolling average of new cases has now hit a record 10,328, a significant jump compared to 4,002 a week ago.

The Ministry of Health says the vaccination status of the latest cases is not available due to technical difficulties.

So far, 87 per cent of Ontarians aged five and over have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 81 per cent have received two doses.

Another 4,037 people recovered from the virus yesterday, resulting in 86,754 known active cases across the province.

Eight more people have died from the virus in the past month, raising the death toll to 10,179.

As the Omicron variant spreads across the province, and worldwide, public health units have been slammed with a high demand for testing.

Ontario labs processed 67,301 tests yesterday, compared to 59,259 the day before.

More than 96,000 tests are currently under investigation.

With a backlog of tests in the pipeline, the Ministry of Health says recent case counts are an underestimate of the true number of infections in Ontario and should be “interpreted with caution.”

The government has said it is aiming to process 78,000 a day but, within the past few weeks, has only come close to that amount once when over 72,000 tests were processed on Christmas Eve.

The province’s testing positivity rate hit a record 30.5 per cent on Thursday, more than double the 16 per cent recorded a week ago.

In the Greater Toronto Area, Toronto reported 3,478 new COVID-19 cases, up from 2,715 infections the day before, while 1,468 new cases were logged in Peel Region, 1,224 in York, 732 in Halton and 538 in Durham.

The ministry says there are currently 965 people with the virus in Ontario hospitals, compared to 726 a day ago, and 200 of those patients are in intensive care units.

The seven-day average of COVID-19 related patients in ICU is 179.

Of the COVID-19 patients in hospital, excluding those in ICU, 182 are unvaccinated, 24 are partially vaccinated and 399 are fully vaccinated.

To date, there have been 739,648 lab-confirmed coronavirus cases and 642,715 recoveries in the province since the pandemic began almost two years ago.

Ontario’s top doctor announced an update to testing and isolating guidelines Thursday afternoon to address the overwhelming demand for both PCR and rapid tests.

Scientific Director of Ontario’s COVID-19 Science Advisory Table Dr. Peter Jüni says the province needs to focus on limiting contacts to reduce community transmission of the Omicron variant.

“...Right now what we just see is that the 50 per cent capacity limits are simply not enough. So we would need to impose more capacity limits, have a clear message that people work from home if they can work from home so that life can continue but at a lower pace with a lot less contacts,” he told CP24 on Thursday.

Moore’s announcement comes as multiple sources confirmed to CTV News Toronto yesterday that the Ford government is meeting to discuss back-to-school guidance for the new year as most students are supposed to head back to class next week.

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.