It's looking more and more like Toronto will finally get the okay to enter Stage 2 of Ontario's reopening process this week as active COVID-19 case numbers plummet and recoveries continue to rise.

The province is reporting only 175 new cases of the deadly viral disease this morning, marking one of the lowest numbers we've seen since public health officials started keeping track through their daily epidemiologic summaries in late March.

A total of 33,476 people in Ontario have now been infected with the virus (at least as confirmed on paper) since January, but 28,719 have already recovered from their illnesses.

As of Sunday, June 21, the recovery rate for COVID-19 in Ontario is sitting at a record high 85.8 per cent. The mortality rate, meanwhile, is holding steady at 7.8 per cent with 11 new deaths confirmed on Saturday and 2,606 deaths in total.

Of those 2,606 deaths, 1,657 (or 63.6 per cent) are said to have occured among residents in long-term care homes.

#COVID19Ontario Demographics Info

By 416 versus GTA versus Rest of Province

By Public Health Unit and by Age Group

Baseline - daily growth - 0.5%
7 Day - 4.0%

Above that bad, below that good

Kudos to the City of Toronto!#COVID19Ontario

CC: @B2Bspecialist pic.twitter.com/aMiNtfOYTK

— Sal Vella (@salvella) June 21, 2020

Sunday marks the seventh day out of the previous eight that Ontario has seen new COVID-19 case numbers come in below the 200 mark — an important metric, given the criteria set forth by Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. David Williams, back in April to move forward with reopening the province's economy.

The phased reopening plan, of which most parts of Ontario (but not Toronto) are now in Stage 2, stated that officials must see "a consistent two-to-four week decrease in the number of new daily COVID-19 cases" before green-lighting any sort of return to normalcy in the province.

Other criteria include "sufficient acute and critical care capacity, including access to ventilators and ongoing availability of personal protective equipment" and a high enough number of tests per day to "detect new outbreaks quickly."

#COVID19Ontario: Daily new cases vs. daily new tests.

Line = 7 day moving average. #COVIDー19 #onhealth pic.twitter.com/uMatfBnWpv

— Dr. Jennifer Kwan (@jkwan_md) June 21, 2020

Some 23,408 tests were completed across the province on Saturday, according to this morning's case update, indicating that testing rates have held steady at a better-than-sufficient level for a few weeks now following a massive and unexplained drop-off in late May.

"Today, Ontario is reporting fewer than 200 cases again, with 175 new cases of #COVID19 or a 0.5% increase. With 251 resolved, we continue to see a persistent decline in active cases in Ontario, with 76 fewer today," said Minister of Health Christine Elliott Sunday morning of the latest figures.

"Locally, 28 of Ontario's 34 PHUs are reporting five or fewer cases, with 14 of them reporting no new cases at all. Well over a week after the first regions moved into Stage 2, we'd expect to start to see local spikes if reopening wasn't done safely. Their absence is good news."

We'll find out whether that good news translates to great news for Toronto, Peel and Windsor on Monday afternoon, when the province announces the results of its weekly region-by-region COVID evaluation (read: drops its new list of areas allowed to enter the next stage of reopening.)