Ontario is reporting 185 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, bringing the provincial total to 548,794.
According to Thursday’s report, 22 in Grey Bruce, 17 in Hamilton, 18 in Toronto, 11 in Durham and York Region and 13 in Peel Region and Waterloo Region.
All other local public health units reported 10 or fewer new cases in the provincial report.
The death toll in the province now stands at 9,307 as seven new deaths were recorded.
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As of 8 p.m. on Wednesday, more than 18.6 million total COVID-19 vaccine doses were administered. That marked an increase of 125,166 vaccines (17,928 for a first shot and 107,238 for a second shot) in the last day.
There are more than 7.9 million people fully immunized with two doses which is 65.5 per cent of the adult (18+) population. First dose adult coverage stands at 80.4 per cent.
Meanwhile, 538,124 Ontario residents were reported to have recovered from COVID-19, which is just over 98 per cent of known cases. Resolved cases increased by 149 from the previous day.
There were less resolved cases than new cases on Thursday.
Active cases in Ontario now stand at 1,363.
The government said 19,599 tests were processed in the last 24 hours. There is currently a backlog of 7,380 tests awaiting results. A total of 16,412,137 tests have been completed since the start of the pandemic.
Test positivity was 0.9 per cent on Thursday.
Ontario reported 140 people are hospitalized with COVID-19 (up by one from the previous day) with 141 patients in intensive care units (down by four) and 84 patients in ICUs on a ventilator (up by 14).
Variants of concern in Ontario
Officials have listed breakdown data for the new VOCs (variants of concern) detected so far in the province which consist of the B.1.1.7 (now named by WHO as “Alpha” and was first detected in the United Kingdom), B.1.351 (now named by WHO as “Beta” and was first detected in South Africa), P.1 (now named by WHO as “Gamma” and was first detected in Brazil), and B.1.617.2 (now named by WHO as “Delta” and was first detected in India).
“Alpha” the B.1.1.7 VOC: 145,021 variant cases, which is up by 99 since the previous day,
“Beta” the B.1.351 VOC: 1,479 variant cases, up by five since the previous day.
“Gamma” the P.1 VOC: 5,096 variant cases, up by 69 since the previous day.
“Delta” B.1.617.2 VOC: 3,754 variant cases, up by 101 since the previous day.
NOTE: It takes several days for positive COVID-19 tests to be re-examined for the exact variant. Therefore, there may be more variant cases than overall cases in daily reporting.