Ontario reports more than 600 new COVID-19 cases for fourth straight day

TORONTO -

Ontario health officials logged 639 new cases of COVID-19 on Monday, marking the fourth straight day in which the daily infections have been over the 600 threshold.

The new cases mark a decrease from the 722 infections reported Sunday, the 689 on Saturday and the 650 cases on Friday.

The seven-day rolling average of daily infections now stands at 580, up from 472 the previous week.

No new deaths were reported on Monday.

Of the 639 infections reported Monday, 515 are in people who are either unvaccinated, partially vaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown.

The remaining 125 cases occurred in individuals who have received both doses of a vaccine.

With more than 19,800 COVID-19 tests processed in the last 24-hour period, the Ministry of Health says the province's positivity rate is about 2.8 per cent.

According to health officials, there are 151 people in intensive care being treated for COVID-19. Of those patients, 82 are breathing with the assistance of a ventilator.

"Please note that all hospitals may not report their data on the weekend. As such, due to incomplete data, the vaccination status of hospital and ICU admissions will not be updated on Sundays and Mondays," Health Minister Christine Elliott said on Twitter Monday.

There have been a total of 560,151 lab-confirmed positive cases of COVID-19 in Ontario so far, including deaths and recoveries.

WHERE ARE THE COVID-19 CASES?

The majority of Monday’s infections can be found in the Greater Toronto Area, however more municipalities are now reporting an increase in daily cases.

There are 124 cases in Toronto, 97 in Peel Region, 91 in York Region, 64 cases in Hamilton, 30 in Durham and 18 in Halton.

Other municipalities recording more than 10 new COVID-19 infections include Windsor-Essex (36), Middlesex-London (32), Ottawa (30), Simcoe-Muskoka (19), Brant County (15), Niagara (11), Waterloo (11) and Wellington (11).v

No data is available regarding how many variants of concern have been identified by health officials. According to the province’s website, ongoing system upgrades are preventing officials from uploading the information.

“Due to ongoing system upgrades, Variants of Concern data was not available on August 18, 19, 20, 21 and 22, 2021 and has not been updated this morning,” the website says.