TORONTO -- Ontario has recorded a slight spike in the number of new COVID-19 cases reported in a single-day, while also confirming the lowest number of deaths in just over six weeks.

On Tuesday, provincial health officials logged 427 new cases of the novel coronavirus, bringing the total number of confirmed patients in Ontario to 23,384, including 1,919 deaths and 17,898 recoveries.

The number of new patients confirmed on Tuesday follows 10 days of daily case counts being below 400. The last time the daily case count in Ontario was above 400 was when health officials confirmed 477 new patients on May 8.

The slight increase in the number of new cases reported on Tuesday comes on the same day the province entered stage one of its “restart phase” with several non-essential businesses reopening to customers with strict public health guidelines in place.

Speaking in response to this on Tuesday afternoon, Premier Doug Ford said “every day is concerning to all of us.”

“We keep an eye on it day-by-day and so does our health table and sometimes you see a little bit of a peak, but overall we want to see consistency over a two-week period, the cases going down,” he said.

Meanwhile, the number of COVID-19 deaths reported in a single-day in Ontario dropped significantly on Tuesday with 15 deceased patients confirmed. The daily death count in the province has not been this low since April 6 when 13 deceased patients were confirmed. The highest number of deaths logged in a single-day was 86 on April 30.

According to Tuesday’s epidemiologic summary, eight of Ontario’s deceased COVID-19 patients were between the ages of 20 and 39. There have been no deaths recorded in people 19 years of age or younger. Eighty-one of all deceased patients in the province were between the ages of 40 and 59 and 491 people were between the ages of 60 and 79. People 80 years of age or older continue to be the hardest hit age group with 1,338 deaths.

There are currently 987 people infected with the novel coronavirus in Ontario hospitals. Of those patients, 167 of them are being treated in the intensive care unit.

According to the province, there have been 280 outbreaks of the disease at long-term care homes, 115 outbreaks at retirement homes and 77 outbreaks at hospitals.

In Ontario, 4,043 health-care workers have become infected with COVID-19.

Quick facts on all COVID-19 patients in Ontario:

  • 42.4 per cent of all patients in the province are male and 56.9 per cent are female – 171 cases did not specify male or female gender
  • 42.1 per cent of all patients are 60 years of age or older – 15 cases did not specify their age
  • 2.9 per cent of all patients are 19 years of age or younger
  • 24.4 per cent of all patients are between the ages of 20 and 39
  • 30.6 per cent of all patients are between the ages of 40 and 59
  • 21.1 per cent of all patients are between the ages of 60 and 79
  • 21 per cent of all patients are 80 years of age or older
  • Public health units in the Greater Toronto Area account for 63.1 per cent of all cases
  • 6.5 per cent of all patients had travelled in the 14 days prior to becoming ill
  • 24.6 per cent of all patients had close contact with a previously confirmed case
  • 35.3 per cent of all patients had community exposure
  • 33.5 per cent of all patients had exposure information listed as pending

COVID-19 testing in Ontario

Across the province, thus far, 559,794 novel coronavirus tests have been conducted.

Ontario conducted 5,813 tests in the last-recorded 24-hour period, the lowest number of daily tests performed by the province in weeks.

Currently, 2,294 test samples remain under investigation in Ontario.