TORONTO -- Ontario health officials are reporting fewer than 1,300 new COVID-19 cases for the fourth straight day.
The province confirmed 1,273 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Friday. This is a slight increase from the 1,039 cases reported on Tuesday, the 1,095 cases reported on Wednesday and the 1,135 cases reported on Thursday.
Tuesday’s case count marked the lowest number of daily reported infections since the beginning of March.
Ontario’s rolling seven-day average now stands at 1,353, down from 2,064 at this point last week.
Health officials also reported that 14 more people have died due to COVID-19. In total, the province has seen 8,711 deaths related to the disease.
There are currently 1,023 people in hospital due to the disease. At least 645 of these patients are in intensive care and 458 are breathing with the assistance of a ventilator.
The province deemed 2,362 more cases of the disease to be resolved as of Friday, bringing Ontario’s number of recovered patients up to 504,304.
Friday’s report brings the total number of lab-confirmed cases in Ontario to 528,453, including deaths and recoveries.
With 40,866 tests processed in the last 24 hours, the Ministry of Health says Ontario’s COVID-19 positivity rate stands at 3.4 per cent.
WHERE ARE THE COVID-19 CASES IN ONTARIO
Most of the new cases reported are concentrated in hot spot regions in the Greater Toronto Area. Officials reported 269 new cases in Toronto, 268 new cases in Peel Region and 56 new cases in York Region.
Officials also reported 101 new cases in Ottawa, 78 new cases in Hamilton and 72 new cases in Durham Region.
The province reported 837 new cases of B.1.1.7 (U.K. variant) in Ontario on Friday. The total case count for the strain now stands at 123,186.
Officials identified 74 new cases of B.1.351 (South African variant), bringing the total case count in the province to 914.
In addition, the province added 72 more cases of P.1 (Brazilian variant), which brings its total number of cases to 2,616.
Ontario does not currently report how many cases of the B.1.617 variant, originally found in India, are found in the province.
However, officials recently stated that Ontario’s count of known examples of the B.1.617 coronavirus variant grew nearly six times in the span of a week in May.
Public Health Ontario said the number of known positive cases of the B.1.617 coronavirus variant grew from 45 to 260 from May 12 to May 19, and is almost certainly higher today.
The province said it is still a “few weeks” away from being able to disclose new findings publicly in real time.
MORE THAN 624K PEOPLE FULLY VACCINATED IN ONTARIO
The province reports that 624,920 people in Ontario have received both doses of a COVID-19 vaccine and are now considered vaccinated against the disease.
In the last 24-hour period, officials said 159,775 doses of the vaccine were administered to residents in the province.
A total of 8,690,473 vaccine doses have been administered in Ontario since the rollout began earlier this year.
Backstory:
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
