Ontario reported 43 people have died as a result of the coronavirus on Sunday as the number of new cases fell below 2,000.
Provincial health officials confirmed 1,848 new infections, a decrease from the 2,063 cases reported the previous day. However, the Ministry of Health says an additional 300 cases from Toronto Public Health that was previously unreported has resulted in an overestimation of the daily count.
Toronto reported 726 new cases, 306 in Peel Region, and 168 in York Region.
It marked the fifth day out of the last seven that fewer than 2,000 new cases were reported, dropping the seven-day moving average to 1,887.
Public Health Ontario has confirmed 58 cases of the UK COVID-19 variant in the province but regional health officials have said they suspect the number is higher. The B.1.1.7 variant is more contagious and may cause more severe illness.
More than 82,000 new cases of COVID-19 were recorded in Ontario in the first month of 2021, compared to almost 64,000 cases in all of December.
The 43 new deaths raise the provincial total to 6,188. Almost half of the new deaths, 21, are from long-term care settings. January was also the deadliest month as 1,658 people died from the virus.
The province says it completed 49,352 tests in the previous 24 hour period, once again failing to process more than 60,000 samples for the second straight day.
Hospitalizations fell below 1,200 across the province, but as is the case on weekends, not every hospital reported its updated data to the province. The number of COVID-19 patients in the ICU remained unchanged at 356 and there are now 252 on ventilators, an increase over the previous day.
The province administered just under 3,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccines on Saturday, bringing the total up to 339,644. Almost 69,000 Ontarians have been fully vaccinated to this points.
