Ontario reports 513 new COVID-19 cases as vaccines administered top 20 million

Ontario reported 513 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, the most since mid-June, while the total number of vaccine doses administered in the province topped 20 million.

Ontario sees 340 new COVID-19 cases — the most since late June

According to Health Minister Christine Elliott, 360 of the additional infections, or about 70 per cent, were in unvaccinated individuals. Another 56 of the cases were people who had only one shot of vaccine, she said, while 88 were fully vaccinated.

You may notice that the figures cited by Elliott add up to 504, not 513. The ministry has previously cautioned that the two numbers may not correspond directly because case counts and the data for the vaccination status of individual cases are taken from different sources and collected over a slightly different time frame.

Ontario’s COVID-19 Science Advisory Table estimates that the reproduction number — a measure of how many other people a single infected person will go on to infect — sits at 1.55. Values above 1 mean that a pandemic is spreading, rather than contracting. That means that daily cases are expected to double every 8 days or so, the table calculates.

Meanwhile, public health units administered another 49,167 doses of vaccines yesterday, the fewest on a Wednesday since March 10. A total of 20,047,991 shots have been administered in Ontario to date.

Roughly 72.5 per cent of eligible Ontarians — those aged 12 and older — have now had two doses of vaccines.

Here are some other key pandemic indicators and figures from the Ministry of Health’s daily provincial update:

Seven-day rolling average of daily cases: 381.

Tests completed in the last 24 hours: 22,896.

Provincewide test positivity rate: 2.1 per cent.

Active cases: 2,868.

Patients in ICU with COVID-related illnesses: 113, up five from yesterday. Overall ICU admissions levelled at about 105 after the third wave of the pandemic, and have been fluctuating between 105 and about 115 since.

Deaths: No new deaths were reported this morning. The official death toll stands at 9,412.

Province adds $2.2B in COVID-19 spending

Ontario is putting an additional $2.2 billion toward COVID-19 spending, amid ongoing uncertainty about variants of concern.

Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy released the province’s 2021-22 first quarter finances today, and says it’s important to have resources available to prepare for potential future surges in the pandemic.

Revenue projections are $2.9 billion higher than in the budget, due to stronger economic growth and increased transfers from the federal government.

The deficit projection is being revised by $700 million, down to $32.4 billion.

Bethlenfalvy didn’t specify what the $2.2 billion in new spending would go toward, saying it’s available for the government to use to protect people’s health and the economy as needed.

The increased revenues include $1.9 billion from the federal government and another approximately $1 billion from corporate taxes and land transfer taxes.

CBC