Daily COVID-19 cases in Ontario drop below 500
Posted August 17, 2021 10:28 am.
Last Updated August 17, 2021 11:17 am.
For the first time since August 12, Ontario’s daily COVID-19 cases have dropped below 500, with 348 new cases reported on Tuesday.
The province is also reporting 10 new deaths, but six of them occurred more than two months ago and were included in Tuesday’s numbers as part of a data clean-up.
The province conducted 17,408 tests in the last 24 hour period with a positivity rate of 2.6 per cent.
In a tweet, Health Minister Christine Elliott said 163 people are hospitalized with COVID-19 (excluding ICU).
Of those patients, 149 are not fully vaccinated or have an unknown vaccination status, while 14 are fully vaccinated.
Elliott added that 81.6 per cent of Ontarians have had at least one vaccine dose, while 73.7 per cent are fully vaccinated.
The majority of people in ICU are also unvaccinated. The province says 49 are unvaccinated, five are partially vaccinated and three are fully vaccinated.
On its website the Ministry of Health notes that “cases by vaccination status may not match the daily COVID-19 case count because records with a missing or invalid health card number cannot be linked.”
