Ontario reports fewest new COVID-19 cases since September

Ontario is reporting 525 new COVID-19 cases and 15 additional deaths on Monday.

It is the smallest daily increase of new infections the province has seen since September. There have been fewer than 1,000 cases for eight consecutive days.

The province is reporting a test positivity rate of 3.6 per cent, down from 4.3 per cent one week ago.

There were 15,177 tests completed in the last 24-hour period.

The province reports another 941 resolved cases, dropping the active case count. Resolved cases have outnumbered new infections each day since mid-April.

Locally, there are 114 new cases in Toronto, 95 in Peel, 51 in Waterloo, 40 in Durham and 34 in York Region.

The province reported 663 cases and 10 deaths on Sunday.

There are now 547 people hospitalized in the province with 497 in the ICU. Hospitalizations are down nearly 200 since one week ago while ICU numbers have dropped more than 100 in the last week.

Graphics courtesy of @jkwan_md

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There were another 116,829 vaccine doses administered in the last 24-hour period.

As of 8:00 p.m. Thursday, 10,109,404 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered and 69.8 per cent of Ontarians over the age of 12 have received at least one dose, while 8.4 per cent of residents are fully vaccinated.

Ontario has expanded second dose eligibility through the provincial booking system this week.

Residents aged 70 and older, as well as people who received their first dose of an mRNA vaccine on or before April 18, can now book their second shot at mass immunization clinics on the province’s online booking portal or through its phone line.

AstraZeneca recipients who received the shot more than 12 weeks ago can now also book an mRNA second dose through the provincial system.

The expansion comes as Ontario nears a vaccination milestone of 10 million doses administered. On Sunday, the province reported that it had given out more than 9,992,000 doses, with more than a million Ontarians fully vaccinated.

Graphics courtesy of @jkwan_md

Ontario is still a week away from the tentative date scheduled by the Ford government for a lifting of some pandemic restrictions but comments last week from Health Minister Christine Elliott suggest the province could be looking at moving it up to sometime this week.

Step 1 of the roadmap to reopening would allow for patio dining and limited non-essential retail shopping.

The first step requires 60 per cent of adults in Ontario to be vaccinated with at least one dose. Nearly 70 per cent of Ontarians over the age of 12 have now received their first dose.