Ontario reported 563 new COVID-19 cases and five more deaths on Friday, with all major transmission indicators now pointing slightly in the wrong direction.
The seven-day moving average of new cases now stands at 390, down from 383 yesterday and 355 a week ago.
The province reported 438 new cases on Thursday and 378 on Wednesday. This is the highest daily number of cases Ontario has seen since October 9.
The Scientific Advisory Table on COVID-19 now calculate Ontario’s effective reproduction rate rose above one to 1.09 on Monday, meaning every 100 new cases will generate 109 secondary infections.
A week ago, they calculated that the reproduction rate was 0.99.
The Health Ministry said 259 of Friday’s cases involved unvaccinated people, 15 involved people who received an injection, 249 involved people who were fully vaccinated and 40 involved people with unknown vaccination status.
The proportion of daily cases in unvaccinated people has been declining steadily for weeks, now accounting for 46% of the number of cases. As late as the summer, nearly 80 percent of all daily cases are believed to involve unvaccinated people.
About 23 percent of Ontario residents are either not vaccinated by choice or are ineligible because of their age.
UHN infectious disease specialist Dr Isaac Bogoch says the trend reversal is real and sustained, and the province must be ready to take action to stop it.
“(The numbers) are going in the wrong direction, it’s not out of control yet but we still have to recognize that instead of having these low, low, low case rates, they’re starting to increase,” a- he declared. CP24.
“If we compare it to last week, it is increasing. It is only in November, there is a lot of autumn and winter ahead of us, there are opportunities for this virus to be transmitted especially indoors. “
He said it is likely the province will experience “peaks and valleys” in cases during the winter period.
“The key here is that the size of the peak is of course entirely on us. We know how to keep this virus at bay as a community. We have the tools to do it with vaccinations, masks, ventilation, crowd control, rapid tests. “
The province of Ontario lifted its last sector-specific occupancy restrictions on restaurants and fitness centers 11 days ago.
Provincial laboratories processed 30,187 test samples, resulting in a positivity rate of at least 1.8% after accounting for errors and duplicate tests.
There are now 3,395 known active cases in Ontario, up from 3,189 yesterday and 3,038 a week ago.
There have been 32 deaths reported in the past week and 9,896 confirmed deaths since March 2020.
In the GTA, York Region reported 52 new cases, Toronto reported 44 new cases, and Peel Region also reported 44 new cases.
Durham Region has reported four new cases, Halton has reported 13 and Hamilton has reported 12 cases.
The Department of Health says there are 129 people in intensive care at the hospital due to COVID-19, with an unspecified number of those patients transferred here from Saskatchewan.
Eighty-one patients breathe using a ventilator.
There are 225 people hospitalized due to COVID-19 overall.
The numbers used in this story can be found in the Ontario Ministry of Health’s COVID-19 Daily epidemiological summary. The number of cases for a city or region may differ slightly from what is reported by the province, as local units report the numbers at different times.
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