TORONTO -- Ontario health officials are reporting just over 500 new cases of COVID-19 for the third straight day.

The province confirmed 502 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Saturday, which comes after officials reported 590 new infections on Thursday and 574 new infections on Friday.

Ontario’s rolling seven-day average now stands at 533, down from 844 at this point last week.

With 24,099 tests processed in the past 24 hours, the Ministry of Health says the positivity rate in the province stood at 2.1 per cent on Saturday.

The province also reported that 15 more people have died due to COVID-19 in the previous 24-hour period, bringing the total number of deaths to 8,950.

There are currently 447 people in hospital due to the disease. At least 422 of these patients are in intensive care and 277 are breathing with the assistance of a ventilator.

The province deemed 830 more cases of the disease to be resolved as of Saturday, bringing Ontario’s number of recovered patients up to 524,362.

Saturday’s report brings the total number of lab-confirmed cases in Ontario to 539,153, including deaths and recoveries.

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 89 new cases in Toronto, 71 new cases in Peel Region, 37 new cases in York Region and 31 new cases in Durham Region.

The province confirmed an additional 1,390 new cases of B.1.1.7 (U.K. variant) in Ontario on Saturday. The total case count for the strain now stands at 138,697.

Officials identified six new cases of B.1.351 (South African variant), bringing the total case count in the province to 1,134.

In addition, the province added 25 more cases of P.1 (Brazilian variant), which brings its total number of cases to 4,124.

Ontario does not currently report how many cases of the B.1.617 variant, originally found in India, are found in the province.

Ontario entered the first step of its reopening plan on Friday, allowing patios and some non-essential retail to open for the first time in months.

MORE THAN 1.6M PEOPLE FULLY VACCINATED IN ONTARIO

The province reports that 1,667,761 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 195,032 doses of the vaccine were administered to Ontario residents.

Just over 11 million vaccine doses have been administered in the province 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