Ontario is reporting more than 3,200 new cases of COVID-19 today and 47 virus-related deaths, the highest daily death toll recorded since February.
Provincial health officials logged 3,216 new infections today, up from 2,864 on Saturday and 3,166 on Friday.
Today’s case count is still down from the 3,732 new infections reported last Sunday. The rolling seven-day average of new cases has also dipped to 3,120 today, down from 3,588 last week.
With 38,540 tests completed over the past 24 hours, the provincewide test positivity rate is 7.1 per cent, down from 8.5 per cent seven days ago.
Ontario’s active COVID-19 caseload dropped to 32,404 today, declining from 37,200 one week ago.
Another 47 virus-related deaths were confirmed today, the highest number of new deaths reported since Feb. 19, when the same single-day death toll was recorded. The average daily death toll in Ontario is now 29, up by two from last week.
Hospitalizations and intensive care unit (ICU) admissions continue to decline. According to the Ministry of Health, there are currently 1,640 COVID-19 patients in Ontario hospitals with 848 in the ICU.
Last Sunday, 1,961 COVID-19 patients were in hospital and 895 were in the ICU.
‘We’ve got to get that number way down’
Of the new cases reported today, 903 are in Toronto, 752 are in Peel Region, 335 are in York Region, 187 are in Durham Region and 150 are in Ottawa.
The province remains under a stay-at-home order until at least May 20 in an effort to drive cases down as Ontario’s vaccination campaign continues.
It is unclear when more parts of the economy will reopen but Mayor John Tory says reopening too quickly would be a mistake.
“The numbers have stabilized. We say yesterday below 3,000 new cases. We saw in Toronto 600 plus which is a big improvement… but you have to focus on the other side of this,” he told CP24 on Sunday morning.
“We’ve got to get that number way down yet because that still represents too high a level of infection and I think the one thing people do agree on as much as they want things open as soon as possible is that we can’t do this too fast.”
Patios briefly reopened in Toronto in March but closed less than two weeks later after a surge in infections prompted the Ford government to implement a provincewide lockdown.
“We have to do it (reopen) in a cautious way so that we don’t in any way precipitate… another wave of these variants, which are very transmissible. So the province I’m sure is looking at this now,” Tory said.
Toronto is expected to reach a vaccination milestone this weekend, administering first doses of a COVID-19 vaccine to 50 per cent of the city’s residents.
The provincial government says 6,144,685 doses of a COVID-19 vaccine have been administered in Ontario to date.
