Ontario is reporting more than 500 new COVID-19 infections today as daily case counts continue to rise week-over-week.
Provincial health officials logged 512 new cases today, up from 481 on Tuesday and 454 last Wednesday.
The seven-day rolling average is also up from last week, reaching 587 today compared to 502 last Wednesday.
Of the new cases today, 250 involve people who are unvaccinated, 19 involve partially vaccinated individuals, 202 are in those who are fully vaccinated, and 41 involve people with an unknown vaccination status.
With 28,931 tests processed over the past 24 hours, officials are reporting a positivity rate of 2.5 per cent, up substantially from 1.8 per cent one week ago.
Ontario's known, active COVID-19 caseload is now 4,741, up from 4,053 seven days ago.
Twelve more virus-related deaths were confirmed by Ontario's Ministry of Health today, including one death involving a person under the age of 20 believed to be in the Windsor-Essex area.
The public health units with the highest number of new cases include Toronto (54), Simcoe-Muskoka (49), Ottawa (43), Windsor (38), Southwestern (27), and Peel Region (26).
The number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care units in the province remains stable, with 133 people receiving treatment in the ICU today, down slightly from 136 last week. Eleven of those patients were transferred to Ontario hospitals from Saskatchewan.
Today's numbers come one day after a senior government official confirmed to CP24 that pharmacies will soon be permitted to conduct PCR tests on symptomatic patients.
Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious diseases specialist with Toronto General Hospital, said while improving access to PCR testing is a good thing, the success of the program will depend on how it is implemented.
"Do you want to put those diagnostic testing centres into environments where you can possibly infect uninfected individuals. No, of course not. That is kind of ridiculous. So I think we've got to be careful with this," Bogoch told CP24 on Wednesday.
"If you had, for example, a little tent outside Shoppers Drug Mart where people could go get a test done and they are separated from perhaps other customers or other individuals who are working or coming into the store, yeah fine. That'd be about as safe as it gets."
In terms of conducting tests indoors, Bogoch said it is possible to do that safely as well.
"You can create a safe indoor space... it is not hard to set up a safe indoor space where this can be done. The question is will that be done," he said. "The devil is in the details. Let's see how this rolls out."
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.
