Ontario reported 423 new COVID-19 cases and six new deaths on Sunday, the fifth straight day of case growth that saw positivity, active caseload and hospitalizations all start to inch upward from the lows notched last month.
The seven-day rolling average of new cases now stands at 261, up from 231 yesterday.
Ontario reported 378 new cases of COVID-19 on Saturday; a multi-month high, as well as 340 on Friday.
Sunday’s count is the highest overall count recorded in the province since June 14 when 447 cases were reported.
Across the GTA, Toronto reported 109 new cases, the first day the city saw more than 100 cases since July 6.
Elsewhere, York Region reported 57 new cases, Peel reported 51, Durham reported 23 and Halton and Hamilton reported 17 and 42 respectively.
All common metrics of the pandemic in the province appear to be increasing, albeit slightly, after months of declines caused by lockdowns and deployment of COVID-19 vaccines.
The known active caseload throughout Ontario reached 2,242 cases, up from 1,667 one week ago.
Test positivity reached two per cent, its highest point since mid-June.
And even hospital occupancy, which has been falling for months, started to increase again.
There were 115 adults in hospital ICUs on Sunday, up from a multi-month low of 106 on Aug. 3.
Epidemiologists predicted cases would rise as most public-facing businesses resumed indoor operations, with experts also pointing to the highly transmissible Delta B.1.617.2 variant as a cause for case growth, especially among the unvaccinated.
The numbers used in this story are found in the Ontario Ministry of Health’s COVID-19 Daily Epidemiologic Summary. The number of cases for any city or region may differ slightly from what is reported by the province, because local units report figures at different times.read more
Ontario reports 423 new coronavirus cases; 6 new deaths – CP24 Toronto’s Breaking News
