Ontario reports over 500 new COVID-19 cases for 1st time since mid-June | Globalnews.ca

Ontario is reporting 513 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, marking the first time cases have been over 500 since 530 were recorded on June 13.

The provincial total now stands at 553,962.

According to Thursday’s report, 105 cases were recorded in Toronto, 70 in York Region, 64 in Peel Region, 44 in Durham, 29 in Hamilton,  27 in Windsor-Essex, and 25 in Simcoe Muskoka District.

All other local public health units reported 20 or fewer new cases in the provincial report.

Of the 513 new cases recorded, the data showed 360 were unvaccinated people and 56 were partially vaccinated people.

The death toll in the province stands at 9,412 as no more deaths were recorded.

Active cases in Ontario now stand at 2868.

The government said over 22,896 tests were processed in the last 24 hours. There is currently a backlog of 9,372 tests awaiting results.

Test positivity for Thursday was 2.1 per cent, up from Wednesday’s and Tuesday’s which was 1.7 per cent.

There are currently 116 patients with COVID-19 in general hospital wards. There are 113 people in intensive care unites and 76 of those ICU patients are on ventilators.

On Tuesday, provincial officials announced they would start including the vaccination status of those hospitalized due to COVID-19 as part of their daily COVID-19 information data portal.

They noted the new dataset will grow and improve over time as more information is collected.

On Thursday, preliminary gathering of data showed for those in general hospital wards with COVID, 106 are not fully vaccinated or their vaccination status is unknown and 10 are fully vaccinated. For those in ICUs, two were fully vaccinated while 111 were unvaccinated or have an unknown vaccination status at this time.

As of 8 p.m. on Wednesday, 49,167 vaccines (11,136 for a first shot and 38,031 for a second shot) were administered in the last day.

There are more than 9.4 million people fully immunized with two doses which is 72.53 per cent of the eligible (12+) population. First dose coverage stands at 81.22 per cent.

Meanwhile, 541,682 Ontario residents were reported to have recovered from COVID-19, which is up by 256 from the previous day.

Variants of concern in Ontario

Officials have listed breakdown data for the new VOCs (variants of concern) detected so far in the province which consist of the B.1.1.7 (now named by WHO as “Alpha” and was first detected in the United Kingdom), B.1.351 (now named by WHO as “Beta” and was first detected in South Africa), P.1 (now named by WHO as “Gamma” and was first detected in Brazil), and B.1.617.2 (now named by WHO as “Delta” and was first detected in India).

“Alpha” the B.1.1.7 VOC: 145,641 variant cases, which is up by nine since the previous day,

“Beta” the B.1.351 VOC: 1,493 variant cases, which is unchanged since the previous day.

“Gamma” the P.1 VOC: 5,176 variant cases, which is down by one since the previous day.

“Delta” B.1.617.2 VOC: 5,873 variant cases, which is up by 148 since the previous day.

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