TORONTO -- Ontario has recorded fewer than 200 new cases of COVID-19 the last three days in a row.
Health officials confirmed another 149 new infections on July 1 and 153 cases of the novel coronavirus on July 2. On Tuesday, officials recorded another 157 cases of COVID-19, a sharp decline from the 257 cases on Monday.
While officials in Ontario have committed to releasing the number of new COVID-19 patients daily, they did not release new patient data on Canada Day.
“After a brief Canada Day hiatus, daily COVID-19 reporting is back,” Ontario Health Minister Christine Elliott said in a post on social media Thursday. “Across both days, there are an additional 386 resolved, meaning 84 fewer active cases.”
The majority of the new cases are in the Greater Toronto Area.
According to Thursday’s epidemiology report, of the 302 cases reported over the last two days, about half—150—were in Toronto. Thirty-nine cases were in Peel Region and 41 were in York Region.
Windsor-Essex, one of the few regions that has not fully moved on to Stage 2 of reopening their economy due to outbreaks among migrant workers, added 20 new cases over the past two days.
Most of the new patients are between the ages of 20 and 59. According to officials, 114 of the 302 cases were between the ages of 20 and 39, while 92 were between the ages of 40 and 59.
Elliott also said that 23 of Ontario’s 34 health units reported no new cases.
The new patients reported Thursday bring Ontario’s total number of lab-confirmed COVID-19 cases to 35,370, including 2,680 deaths and 30,730 recoveries.
Health officials reported another eight people have died after contracting COVID-19, four were reported on July 1 and four on July 2.
Of those that died to date, 11 are between the ages of 20 and 39, 105 are between the ages of 40 and 59 and 715 are between the ages of 60 and 79.
More than 1,800 people over the age of 79 have died after being diagnosed with the disease.
One person under the age of 19 has also died.
The province said that more than 30 hospitals did not report information for June 30, and therefore the number of hospitalizations related to COVID-19 “is likely an underestimate and will increase in tomorrow’s count.”
The data shows that at least 119 people are in the hospital due to the novel coronavirus, with 40 of those patients in the intensive care unit (ICU).
Of those in the ICU, at least 26 are breathing with a ventilator.
COVID-19 testing in Ontario
More than 50,000 COVID-19 tests were conducted across the province over the past two days, Elliott said. The data shows that at least 24,322 of those tests were conducted in the last 24 hours.
A little more than 13,000 tests are still under investigation.
More than 1.4 million COVID-19 tests have been conducted since the pandemic was declared.