Ontario sets new record in daily COVID-19 cases, 25 more deaths

By News staff

Ontario set a new single-day high in COVID-19 cases on Friday for the second day in a row, as the province continues to struggle with bringing the third wave of the pandemic under control.

Health officials reported 4,812 new infections, surpassing Thursday’s record of 4,736 cases.

Another 25 people have died in the province as a result of the virus, raising the death toll to 7,664.

Of the new diagnoses, 1,469 were in Toronto, followed by 851 in Peel Region, 491 in York Region, and 268 and Durham Region.

The province said 701 people were currently in intensive care units (ICU) and overall hospitalizations rose to 1,955. Out of those patients, 480 were in the ICU on a ventilator — which is up from 442 on Thursday.

With the virus variants steering the third wave, another nearly 3,000 cases of a variant of concern were recorded with the total cases at 30,476. A majority of the VOC cases are of the variant first detected in the U.K.

Health officials said more than 64,000 tests were completed in the past 24 hours, with a positivity rate of 8.2 per cent — an increase from eight per cent the day before.

An additional 115,634 doses of a COVID-19 vaccine were given since the previous daily update. So far, more than 341,000 Ontarians have been fully vaccinated.

Ontario surpassed 400,000 total cases on Thursday, less than two months after topping 300,000 on Feb. 24. Since the pandemic began more than a year ago, the province has recorded 408,383 cases but 360,742 of them have since been resolved.

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