Ontario logs 600 new COVID-19 cases as province reaches new vaccine milestone

TORONTO -

Six hundred new COVID-19 cases have been identified in Ontario on Monday as officials mark a new vaccine milestone in the province.

The new infections mark a significant decrease from the 784 cases on Sunday, 857 cases on Saturday and 848 cases on Friday.

The seven-day average of daily COVID-19 infections now stands at about 717.

With just over 19,100 tests processed in the last 24-hour period, the Ministry of Health says Ontario’s positivity rate is about 3.1 per cent.

Of the 600 new COVID-19 cases reported Monday, 475 are in individuals that are not fully vaccinated or whose status is unknown.

The province also reported an additional six deaths related to the disease on Monday, bringing the total death tally in Ontario to 9,617.

Officials say that two of the six deaths “occurred more than one month ago and were added to the cumulative count based on data cleaning.”

There are 189 patients in Ontario intensive care units being treated for COVID-19.

Health officials say that due to a technical issue, data on overall hospitalizations due to COVID-19 is not available.

WHERE ARE THE COVID-19 CASES?

Officials say there are 114 infections in Toronto, 84 in Peel Region and 67 in York Region.

Multiple other municipalities reported more than 20 new COVID-19 cases on Monday, including Ottawa (59), Windsor-Essex (47), Hamilton (32), Waterloo (30), Halton Region (28), Niagara (28), and Durham Region (20).

According to the province’s epidemiology report, of the 600 new infections reported Monday, 122 cases were identified in children under the age of 12.

There were 57 cases in youth between the ages of 12 and 19.

Officials say that 241 infections were found in individuals between the ages of 20 and 39, while 132 cases were in people between the ages of 40 and 59.

Forty-eight cases were identified in people over the age of 60.

Officials also reported an additional 238 cases of the Delta variant in lab-confirmed COVID-19 tests. This brings the total number of cases to 14,884.

11 MILLION PEOPLE NOW PARTIALLY VACCINATED

The number of people who have received their first dose of COVID-19 continues to increase. As of Monday, more than 11 million people have received their first shot.

The milestone comes ahead of planned anti-vaccine protests scheduled to take place outside of hospitals across Canada, including in the Greater Toronto Area.

Officials say that about 84 per cent of eligible Ontarians aged 12 and up have received at least one dose of a vaccine while 78 per cent are considered fully vaccinated.

Infectious diseases specialist Dr. Isaac Bogoch told CP24 on Monday that all of his patients in ICU due to COVID-19 this past month have been individuals who were not fully vaccinated.

"Every single patient I’ve seen with COVID in the hospital has been unvaccinated. Every single one. And some of them are very, very sick. Not all of them ore old or have co-morbidities,” he said.

“There is overwhelming data from multiple countries, from multiple sources in multiple countries, all pointing in the same direction. These vaccines will reduce your risk of getting the infection but the heavy lifting is really done in keeping you out of hospital, keeping you out of the ICU, and preventing you from dying.”

In total, 10,179,312 people in Ontario have received both doses of a COVID-19 vaccine.