TORONTO -- New COVID-19 cases in Ontario have jumped back up past the 1,000 mark Wednesday following a slight dip reported a day earlier.
Health officials said they logged 1,054 infections across the province in the last 24 hours. Ontario added 975 cases on Tuesday.
This brings Ontario’s lab-confirmed COVID-19 case count to 296,173, including 279,230 recoveries and 6,893 deaths.
Nine of those deaths occurred in the previous day.
With 54,852 tests processed in the last 24-hour period, the province said its COVID-19 positivity rate stands at 2.4 per cent.
Ontario’s seven-day average for number of cases reported is currently 1,084, up from 1,002 this time last week.
Right now, there are 10,050 active cases of the novel coronavirus in Ontario.
Where are the new COVID-19 cases?
Most of the cases reported Wednesday were found in Toronto, Peel Region and York Region.
The province says that Toronto added 363 infections, while Peel Region logged 186 and York Region logged 94.
York Region moved back into Ontario’s colour-coded reopening framework on Monday allowing gyms and restaurants to reopen with strict public health measures in place.
Toronto and Peel Region remain under a stay-at-home order that is set to expire on March 8.
There are currently 675 people in hospital with COVID-19. Of those patients, 287 are receiving treatment in an intensive care unit and 182 are on a ventilator.
Five more cases of U.K. variant confirmed in Ontario
According to data released by the province, five more cases of the COVID-19 variant B.1.1.7, also known as the U.K. variant, were confirmed in Ontario.
This pushes the total number of lab-confirmed B.1.1.7 infections in Ontario to 395.
The number of B.1.351 (South African variant) and P.1 (Brazilian variant) infections in the province remain unchanged at nine and one, respectively.
On Monday, provincial health officials confirmed that 16,495 swabs have screened positive for a variant of concern and are awaiting full genomic sequencing.
More than 250,000 people fully vaccinated
Ontario said Wednesday that it had successfully vaccinated 251,590 residents against COVID-19.
Since vaccinations began in December, some 600,000 doses have been administered with more than 17,000 needles going into arms in the previous day.
The news comes as the province’s COVID-19 vaccination task force announced that the online platform to book COVID-19 vaccine appointments for the general public will be launched on March 15.
At that time, people over the age of 80 will be first in line to get the shot, the province confirmed.
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.
