Ontario reports 484 COVID-19 cases, 28 deaths over past 2 days

Ontario is reporting 484 total new COVID-19 cases for the past two days, bringing the provincial total to 545,381.

There were no reported numbers on Thursday due to Canada Day. There were 200 new cases on Friday and 284 on Thursday.

According to Friday’s report, 41 cases were recorded in Waterloo Region, 23 in Toronto, 21 in Peel Region and 18 in Grey Bruce.

On Thursday, 56 cases were recorded in Waterloo Region, 51 in Grey Bruce and 41 in Toronto.

All other local public health units reported fewer than 15 new cases in the provincial report on both Thursday and Friday.

The death toll in the province has risen to 9,196 as 28 more deaths were recorded over the two-day period.

As of 8 p.m. on Thursday, more than 15.1 million total COVID-19 vaccine doses were administered. That marked another new record increase of 413,361 vaccines (35,592 for a first shot and 377,769 for a second shot) in the last two days.

There are more than 5.1 million people fully immunized with two doses which is 42.3 per cent of the adult (18+) population. First dose adult coverage stands at 77.9 per cent.

Meanwhile, 534,010 Ontario residents were reported to have recovered from COVID-19, which is about 98 per cent of known cases. There were 257 resolved cases reported Thursday and 281 on Friday.

Active cases in Ontario now stand at 2,175 — down from Wednesday when it was 2,257 and is down from June 25 when it was at 2,899.

The government said 52,090 tests were processed over the past 48 hours. There is currently a backlog of 5,464 tests awaiting results. A total of 16,001,372 tests have been completed since the start of the pandemic.

Test positivity for Thursday and Friday hit 0.9 per cent.

Ontario reported 179 people are hospitalized with COVID-19 (down by 72 from Wednesday) with 252 patients in intensive care units (down by 19 from Wednesday) and 160 patients in ICUs on a ventilator (down by 21 from Wednesday).

Variants of concern in Ontario

Officials have listed breakdown data for the new VOCs (variants of concern) detected so far in the province which consist of the B.1.1.7 (now named by WHO as “Alpha” and was first detected in the United Kingdom), B.1.351 (now named by WHO as “Beta” and was first detected in South Africa), P.1 (now named by WHO as “Gamma” and was first detected in Brazil), and B.1.617.2 (now named by WHO as “Delta” and was first detected in India).

“Alpha” the B.1.1.7 VOC: 143,833 variant cases, which is up by 389 since Wednesday.

“Beta” the B.1.351 VOC: 1,415 variant cases, which is up by 50 since Wednesday.

“Gamma” the P.1 VOC: 4,628 variant cases which is up by 84 since Wednesday.

“Delta” B.1.617.2 VOC: 1,995  variant cases which is up by 86 since Wednesday.

NOTE: It takes several days for positive COVID-19 tests to be re-examined for the exact variant. Therefore, there may be more variant cases than overall cases in daily reporting.

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