TORONTO -- Ontario is reporting a slight dip in daily COVID-19 cases after logging more than 5,800 infections in the last two days.
Health officials recorded 2,964 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Sunday, marking a decrease from the record-breaking 3,363 infections a day earlier, but a slight increase from the 2,476 cases reported on Friday.
There were 3,328 cases reported on Thursday and 2,923 cases added on Wednesday.
The new cases push Ontario’s rolling seven-day average of infections to 2,792.
On Sunday, the province also recorded an additional 25 deaths, bringing the total death toll related to the disease to 4,650.
At least 15 of those new deaths were residents in long-term care homes.
According to Sunday’s epidemiology report, two of the other 10 deceased were between the ages of 20 and 39. Only 20 people within that demographic have died after contracting COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic.
At least 3,215 of the 4,650 COVID-19 deaths have been in people over the age of 80. There have been 177 people who have died between the ages of 40 and 59 and 1,236 deaths in people between the ages of 60 and 79.
There are currently 228 ongoing outbreaks of COVID-19 in Ontario long-term care homes and 129 in the province’s retirement homes.
Sixty hospitals are also experiencing an outbreak of the novel coronavirus.
As of Sunday, at least 998 people are being treated in Ontario hospitals for COVID-19, with 329 of them getting care in intensive care units (ICU). Of the ICU patients, 228 are breathing with the assistance of a ventilator.
Provincial officials say those numbers may be an underrepresentation as more than 10 per cent of hospitals did not submit data.
“We anticipate the number of hospitalized patients may increase when reporting compliance increases,” they said.
The total number of lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Ontario has now surpassed 190,000, including deaths and recoveries.
Where are the new COVID-19 cases?
The majority of new infections were reported in the Greater Toronto Area.
There were 786 cases in Toronto, 346 in Peel Region, 308 in York Region, 197 in Durham Region, 172 in Hamilton and 100 in Halton Region.
Other public health units reporting more than 50 COVD-19 cases include Ottawa (100), Simcoe-Muskoka (58), Windsor-Essex (187), Middlesex-London (79), Lambton (55), Niagara Region (113), Waterloo (157) and Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph (53).
After setting a new testing record of more than 70,000 swabs processed on Friday, the number of COVID-19 tests processed appears to have dropped. On Saturday officials completed over 61,400 tests and on Sunday, that number dipped to 49,800.
The Ministry of Health says the testing brings the province’s positivity rate to about 5.6 per cent.