Ontario reports 2,448 new cases of COVID-19, additional 19 deaths

For the fourth straight day, Ontario is reporting more than 2,100 new cases of COVID-19.

Provincial health officials say 2,448 new infections were confirmed on Sunday, pushing the seven-day rolling average to above 2,000 for the first time since the end of January.

Toronto accounts for almost 32 per cent of all new cases in the province with 780 infections reported, followed by 356 in Peel Region and 278 in York Region.

Hamilton, which is set to return to the Grey-Lockdown zone on Monday, was one of only two regions within the GTHA to report fewer than 100 new cases, confirming 78 on Sunday.

An additional 108 variants of concern were confirmed by the province with 102 of those being the variant first discovered in the United Kingdom. That’s the highest number of new VOC’s reported since the beginning of March. Variants of concern now account for 1,755 COVID-19 cases across the province.

An additional 19 people have died as a result of the virus – the fifth consecutive day of double-digit deaths, raising the provincial death toll to 7,327. A total of 86 people have died in the past week of COVID-19.

The province says 50,227 tests were completed in the previous 24 hours, with a percent positivity rate of 4.5 per cent which remains unchanged from the previous day.

The number of hospitalizations due to COVID-19 remains above 900 with 366 of the those patients in the ICU. The number of people on ventilators has risen to above 200. However, as is the case on weekends, the province says more than 10 per cent of hospitals have not reported their numbers.

A week ago at this time, 760 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 with just over 300 of them in the ICU.

The province says it administered 64,950 doses of the COVID-19 vaccines on Saturday for a total of 1,981,282 doses given. A total of 308,301 Ontarians have been fully vaccinated against the virus.