TORONTO – Health officials in Ontario are reporting 854 new cases of COVID-19 on Saturday as well as two other deaths linked to the disease.
The seven-day average for reported cases in the province is now 729. One week ago it was 635 and two weeks ago it was 563.
On Friday, Ontario saw 927 cases of the new coronavirus, marking its highest single-day total reported since September 4 when the province recorded 944 cases.
Saturday’s report comes a day after Canada announced that it would ban entry of foreign nationals who may have passed through southern Africa in the past two weeks. This decision was made by an announcement by the World Health Organization (WHO), which designated B.1.1.529 as a new COVID-19 variant of interest named “Omicron”.
According to the WHO, this variant, first reported from South Africa on 24 November, contains a “large number of mutations”, some of which are “ongoing”.
Canada’s Director of Public Health, Dr Theresa Tam, said that so far, there has been no indication of the presence of this variant in Canada. However, Tam said it was “very difficult” to completely remove the surge out of Canada.
Hours before the announcement, Prime Minister Doug Ford publicly called on Ottawa to ban all flights and passengers from the countries associated with the newly discovered variant, including South Africa, Mozambique, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho and Eswatini.
Of the cases reported today, 451 involve unvaccinated individuals, 349 involve fully vaccinated individuals, 23 partially vaccinated and 31 cases were found in people with no known vaccination status.
Currently, there are 254 patients hospitalized with COVID-19, including 83 unvaccinated patients, 48 fully vaccinated patients, and 8 partially vaccinated patients. The vaccination status of the remaining 115 patients is unknown.
The total number of ICU admissions for COVID-19 was 134, 60 of whom were unvaccinated, 11 were fully immunized and 3 were partially immunized. No vaccination information was provided for the remaining 60 patients.
With 31,444 tests processed in the last 24 hours, the province said the positive rate for COVID-19 was 3%.
Since the start of the pandemic, Ontario has recorded 616,051 lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 599,979 recoveries and 9,933 deaths – two of which were reported in 24 past hour.
WHERE IS THE NEW CASES OF COVID-19?
Most of the cases reported by the province on Saturday were found in Simcoe Muskoka (107), Toronto (97) and Windsor-Essex (82).
Other regions with relatively high numbers of cases reported today include York Region (48), Peel Region (47), Ottawa (44), Sudbury (43), Algoma (38) and Kingston (33) .
UPDATE ON COVID-19 LOCATIONS
Health Minister Christine Elliott said in a tweet published Saturday that nearly 89.4% of all Ontarians over the age of 12 receive a dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Nearly 86.3% received two doses and are considered fully vaccinated.
During the province’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign, 22,895,217 needles were shipped throughout Ontario.
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The numbers used in this story are found in Health Ontario’s COVID-19 Daily Epidemiology Summary. The case numbers for any given city or region may differ slightly from those reported by the province, as local units report figures at different times.
Health experts say the number of confirmed COVID-19 infections in fully vaccinated people will naturally increase as more people get both shots.
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