covid 19 ontario

Ontario confirms only 203 new cases of COVID-19 for lowest increase rate on record

With just over 200 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed on Wednesday, Ontario's Ministry of Health is reporting the lowest one-day patient increase we've seen since the province started keeping track through its daily epidemiologic summaries.

This should come as excellent news to members of the public and government officials alike as (most of) Ontario prepares to enter Stage 2 of reopening, which will allow residents in all but 10 regions once again visit restaurants, get haircuts and swim in public pools.

A total of 31,544 lab-confirmed cases of the 2019 novel coronavirus have now been logged through the ministry's Public Health Information System, along with 2,487 deaths (64.3 per cent of them in long-term care homes).

Today's addition of 203 new cases represents an increase rate of only 0.6 per cent, which is the lowest Ontario has posted since the pandemic first started spreading in February.

And not only are we tracking quite well this week in terms of case numbers — coming in under the 300 mark again for the fourth day in a row — but Ontario also just broke its own daily testing record.

Public health officials completed 24,341 tests for the virus yesterday, according to the Ministry of Health's COVID-19 data portal, marking the highest number of tests recorded in 24 hours to date and falling just shy of the province's own stated capacity of 25,000.

"Having processed nearly 925,000 tests since the outbreak started, Ontario now ranks second in Canada in cumulative per capita testing, behind only Alberta," said Minister of Health Christine Elliott in a statement Thursday morning.

"With our population size, that's a remarkable milestone.

Recovery rates also continue to soar across the province with 505 cases declared "resolved" in today's report alone.

As of Thursday morning, Ontario's recovery rate for COVID-19 is sitting at 82.1 per cent, while the mortality rate holds steady at 7.9 per cent. Twelve new deaths were recorded across the province on Wednesday.

"With 505 resolved, there are now 302 fewer active cases," said Elliott of the situation.

"In fact, since Tuesday there are 709 fewer active cases of the virus in Ontario. The vast majority of new cases continue to come from the GTA."

Lead photo by

IAEA Imagebank


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