Ontario reports significant jump in COVID-19 infections with more than 3,000 new cases

Ontario is reporting a significant jump in daily COVID-19 infections with more than 3,000 new cases logged.

On Friday, health officials logged an additional 3,124 cases of the novel coronavirus, as well as five deaths related to the disease.

The number of cases reported daily in Ontario have been increasing at a steady rate over the last four days. There were 2,421 infections on Thursday, 1,808 on Wednesday and 1,429 on Tuesday.

The last time the province reported more than 3,000 cases in a day was on May 9, when 3,216 infections were reported.

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The rolling seven-day average of daily COVID-19 cases now stands at about 1,914, up from 1,005 the previous week.

With just over 51,600 COVID-19 tests processed in the last 24 hours, the Ministry of Health says the province's positivity rate now stands at about 8.2 per cent. Yesterday that number was about seven per cent.

On Thursday, Ontario's COVID-19 Science Advisory Table warned that without a "circuit breaker" in which people continued to follow public health guidelines while cutting their contacts by 50 per cent, the province could see up to 10,000 infections a day before Christmas.

The rise in cases is the result of the new Omicron variant, which officials say is highly contagious. According to the science table, the number of Omicron cases is doubling every 2.8 days.

Thursday's modelling also suggested that Ontario's intensive care capacity could reach unsustainable levels in January.

As of Friday, there are 157 people being treated in the ICU for COVID-19. Of those patients, Health Minister Christine Elliott says that 124 are not fully vaccinated or have an unknown vaccination status and 33 are fully vaccinated.

WHERE ARE THE NEW COVID-19 CASES?

Eleven public health units are reporting more than 100 COVID-19 infections.

In the GTA, Toronto is reporting 759 infections while Peel Region is reporting 209 and York Region is reporting 215.

There are 194 cases in Halton, 155 cases in Durham and 107 in Hamilton.

Other municipalities with more than 100 infections include Ottawa (294), Kingston (208), Simcoe-Muskoka (138), Middlesex-London (116), and Waterloo (100). '

According to the province's epidemiology report, there are 469 cases in people under the age of 12. An additional 309 cases were found in youth between the ages of 12 and 19.

The majority of infections were logged in 20 to 29 year olds with 1,317 cases and in individuals between the ages of 40 and 59 with 788 cases.

Two hundred and forty-three cases are in people over the age of 60.

Of the new infections reported Friday, the Ministry of Health says 874 are in people who are either unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated. About 2,120 cases were logged in people who received two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine while the vaccination status of an additional 130 people is unknown.

About 18 per cent of the Ontario population is unvaccinated and they made up 25 per cent of all cases, while 68 per cent of Friday’s cases involved vaccinated people and they make up 77 per cent of the province’s population.

Experts have said the province needs to ramp up its booster program as a third dose substantially increase protection against the Omicron variant.

On Thursday Ontario administered 156,525 vaccine doses, with 13,562 first doses, 5,188 second doses and 137,775 third doses.

About 82 per cent of eligible Ontario residents have at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, while 77 per cent have two dose. As of Friday, 10.7 per cent have a third dose.