Ontario's Ministry of Health is reporting 344 new cases of COVID-19 within the province as of Friday morning, based on numbers submitted through its integrated Public Health Information System Thursday afternoon.

With 29,747 cases confirmed in total throughout the course of the pandemic, this represents a case increase rate of 1.2 per cent for the third day in a row.

The mortality rate remains steady as well at eight per cent with 15 deaths reported Friday morning for a new total of 2,372 — 1,519 of which (or 64 per cent) occurred among patients in long-term care homes.

While Ontario has been holding steady at the same case increase rate, mortality rate, and hitting new case numbers below the 400 mark now for a few days straight, our overall recovery numbers continue to climb day by day.

As of Friday morning, the Ministry of Health was reporting 23,583 "resolved" cases, making for an all-time high recovery rate of 79.3 per cent.

#COVID19Ontario Demographics Info

By 416 versus GTA versus Rest of Province

By Public Health Unit and by Age Group

Baseline - daily growth - 1.2%
7 Day - 9.3%

Above that bad, below that good#COVID19Ontario

CC: @B2Bspecialist pic.twitter.com/qQ4N1PAsNQ

— Sal Vella (@salvella) June 5, 2020

Testing numbers also remain well above the provincial government's benchmark of 16,000 per day (though below its capacity of 25,000) with 20,730 completed on Thursday, according to the province's dedicated COVID-19 web portal. 

Unfortunately, these some of these nice-to-see (or at least not terrible-to-see) trends aren't proving consistent on a regional basis.

The proportionate number of cases confirmed by Greater Toronto Area public health units continues to rise alongside the overall case count, hitting 66.6 per cent in this morning's data release.

That's in terms of all cases tracked since January. For new cases specifically, roughly 85 per cent came out of the Toronto area today. Yesterday, it was 83 per cent.

Once again, the GTA makes up the large majority of new confirmed #COVID19 cases in Ontario: 291 of the 344 cases are from Toronto and Central East (85 per cent): https://t.co/vZ3PLiRhXO

— Jamie Long (@cbcjlong) June 5, 2020

GTA health units include Toronto Public Health, Durham Region Health Department, Peel Public Health and York Region Public Health.

The former health unit, specific to Toronto proper, has now confirmed 10,926 of the total cases in Ontario, while the other three units fall under the category of "Central East" and account for 9,631 of all the province's cases.

After repeatedly stating that he wouldn't consider reopening the province on a region-by-region basis, it appears as though Premier Doug Ford may be starting to take these discrepancies more seriously.

The premier revealed during a press conference last week that his government would consider taking a regional approach to reopening the economy, now that testing has been expanded and increased enough to detect specific hot spots, and earlier this week he noted that the COVID-19 command is currently "looking at" what types of services might be reopened on a region-by-region level.

Ontarians should know more within the next week, according to Ford, though judging by the numbers, Torontonians shouldn't get their hopes up too much.