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Ontario is reporting 1,822 new cases of COVID-19 on Saturday as the tests processed exceeded the province’s daily target for the second consecutive day.
Provincial health officials say 29 other people have died from the virus, 11 of whom were long-term nursing home residents.
Currently, there are 105 long-term care homes in Ontario with an outbreak of the virus.
Most cases continue to come from the Greater Toronto Area, where Toronto and the Peel region went on lockdown for 28 days on Monday to curb the spread of the virus.
“Locally, there are 566 new cases in Toronto, 516 in Peel, 145 in the York region, 105 in Waterloo and 102 in Hamilton,” Health Minister Christine Elliott tweeted Saturday.
Elsewhere in the GTA, the Halton region recorded 68 new cases of the virus, a notable drop from 130 the day ago, and the Durham region recorded 48 new infections, up from 65 on Friday.
Meanwhile, Ottawa recorded 46 new cases, down from 55 the previous day.
Only five of Ontario’s 34 public health units have reported zero new cases of the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours.
The increase in the number of new cases brought the seven-day moving average to 1,522, up from 1,489 a day ago.
The province recorded a record 1,855 new infections on Friday, the highest number of new cases since the pandemic began in March. On Thursday, Ontario recorded 1,478 cases and 1,373 infections on Wednesday.
According to the province’s latest epidemiological summary, 55,086 tests have been processed in the past 24 hours, down from Friday’s record of 58,137, but still well above the province’s daily target of 50,000 tests.
More than 56,200 tests are being studied.
The increase in the test rate lowered the province’s positivity rate to at least 3.4 percent, from 3.7 the previous day.
Health officials say 1,510 more people have recovered from the virus, bringing the total number of active cases to 13,538.
To date, there have been 113,038 cases of the virus in Ontario since January and 95,876 recoveries. A total of 3,624 people in Ontario have died from the novel coronavirus.
COVID-19 hospitalizations continue to increase across the province. There are currently 595 people hospitalized with the virus in Ontario, up from 541 on Friday. Of these patients, 155 are in an intensive care unit and 99 are breathing with the help of a ventilator.
On Friday, Premier Doug Ford asked the federal government to provide a clear timeline of when Ontario will receive the first doses of a COVID-19 vaccine.
Ford made the remarks during his daily briefing, along with Health Minister Christine Elliott and retired General Rick Hillier, the new head of the province’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution task force.
The premier said it was “impossible” to plan the distribution of the vaccine, including personnel and storage of doses, without a timeline and “time is running out”.
“That’s why, as we continue to plan, we need certainty from the federal government. We need to know what type of vaccines we will receive, because each vaccine will have unique requirements and potential challenges. And we also need to know how many vaccines we will receive each week. We need a clear line of sight on the timing of shipments, ”Ford said on Friday.
During an announcement by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday, he declined to provide a clear timeline for when Canadians will have access to a vaccine, but said he hopes to vaccinate more than half of Canadians by September 2021.
Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines have yet to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, but they could receive approval as early as two weeks.
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