Ontario reports 1,022 new COVID-19 cases — the fewest since early November
Number of active COVID-19 cases continued steady decline
Ontario reported another 1,022 cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, the fewest on a single day (without data problems) since early November.
Officially, the province logged just 745 additional infections on Feb. 2 —but that figure included no cases from Toronto Public Health due to a major data migration.
The new cases today include 343 in Toronto, 250 in Peel Region and 128 in York Region.
They come one day after Premier Doug Ford announced his government's plan to begin transitioning regions out of lockdown.
Other public health units that saw double-digit increases were:
- Halton Region: 42
- Waterloo Region: 41
- Durham Region: 25
- Ottawa: 25
- Middlesex-London: 24
- Simcoe Muskoka: 23
- Niagara Region: 18
- Windsor-Essex: 16
- Haliburton, Kawartha, Pine Ridge: 13
- North Bay Parry Sound: 13
- Hamilton: 12
- Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph: 12
(Note: All of the figures used in this story are found on the health ministry's COVID-19 dashboard or in its Daily Epidemiologic Summary. The number of cases for any region may differ from what is reported by the local public health unit because local units report figures at different times.)
The seven-day average of new daily cases rose slightly to 1,367.
There are now about 13,948 confirmed, active cases of COVID-19 provincewide. The number of active cases has steadily declined since its peak at more than 30,500 in mid-January.
The trends come as Ontario's network of labs completed 30,798 tests for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and logged a test positivity rate of 3.3 per cent. Another 33,273 test samples were added the queue to be processed.
According to the Ministry of Health, there were 909 people with COVID-19 in hospitals. Of those, 318 were being treated in intensive care and 223 needed a ventilator to breathe.
Public health units also recorded 17 more deaths of people with the illness. Ontario's COVID-19-linked death toll is 6,555.
Meanwhile, the province said it administered 12,462 more COVID-19 vaccines yesterday. That's the most in a 24-hour period in about three weeks, and the first time this month that the number of shots has surpassed 10,000 on a single day.
Ontario's rollout of vaccines continues to be hampered by supply squeezes, health officials said last week.
This morning, Health Canada announced that it will amend labels on vials of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to indicate that they each contain six doses, rather than five.
Members of Ontario's vaccine distribution task force have previously said the province has ordered a shipment of the 1 mL syringes that are needed to consistently extract a sixth dose from the vials.
With files from Lucas Powers