Ontario reported 994 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday and 10 additional deaths, as public health laboratories confirmed their largest count of additional cases involving variants of concern to date.
Across the GTA, Toronto reported 298 new cases, York Region reported 64, and Peel reported 171.
Ontario reported 958 new cases on Wednesday, 966 on Tuesday and 1,023 on Monday.
The seven-day rolling average of daily cases now stands at 1,063, down from 1,084 on Wednesday.
Two of the ten new deaths reported involved residents of long-term care homes.
Provincial labs processed 65,643 test specimens in the past 24 hours, generating a positivity rate of at least 2.1 per cent.
Another 42,723 specimens remain under investigation.
Using whole genomic sequencing, labs also confirmed another 92 new coronavirus cases involving variants of concern over the past day, bringing the total confirmed number of variant cases to 678, including 644 cases of the more highly contagious B.1.1.7 variant.
It’s the largest increase in confirmed variant cases reported in Ontario in 2021, though thousands more samples that have screened positive during initial PCR testing still await full confirmation.
Ontario’s Ministry of Health says the number of patients in hospital due to COVID-19 fell over the past 24 hours.
They say there were 649 patients in hospital receiving treatment on Thursday, down from 668 on Wednesday. Of those, 281 were in intensive care and 183 were breathing with the help of a ventilator.
But data from Critical Care Services Ontario obtained by CP24 on Thursday showed there were 326 people in intensive care on Thursday.
Elsewhere in the GTA, Halton Region reported 33 cases, Durham Region reported 23 new cases and Hamilton reported 40 new cases.
The province said it set a new record for administering COVID-19 vaccines on Wednesday, administering more than 30,000 shots.
The Ministry of Health says 784,828 doses have now been administered, and 268,100 people have completed a full two-dose inoculation.
Going forward, growth in the number of full inoculations may slow as Canadian provinces move to space out doses of COVID-19 vaccines up to four months apart.
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.
