

Chris Fox, CP24.com





Ontario has confirmed another 606 new cases of COVID-19, making today the second straight day in which an alarming new record has been set.

The 606 new cases surpasses the 568 that were reported on Sunday. Those number, however, were believed to have been inflated due to the belated addition of data from Toronto Public Health that was not uploaded to the provincial database the previous day.

There are now 11,184 confirmed cases of the virus in Ontario, which is up roughly 50 per cent from the 7,470 cases that had been confirmed at this point last week.

The rise in confirmed cases come as the province increases its testing after being last among Canadian provinces on a per capita basis for weeks. It has now conducted more than 164,000 tests for COVID-19, including nearly 9,000 over the last 24 hours.

The Ministry of Health is also reporting 31 new deaths today, bringing the total number attributed to COVID-19 so far to 584.

Of those deaths, about half of them (249) have involved patients at long-term care homes, including nine over the last 24 hours.

The number of confirmed cases at long-term care homes also continues to rise as the province works to ramp up testing in those facilities, where Premier Doug Ford has compared the spread of the virus to “like wildfire.”

There are now 114 outbreaks at Ontario long-term care facilities with those outbreaks having resulted in 1,317 confirmed cases of the virus among residents and 644 confirmed cases among staff. That equates to 45 new cases involving residents from one day prior and seven new cases involving staff.

The good news is that hospitalizations continue to trend downwards, albeit at an extremely slow rate.

There are now 802 people hospitalized with COVID-19 (down from 809), including 247 people in intensive care units. That number had gotten as high as 263 last week but has been on the decline in recent days.

It should be noted that the province remains well off the grim projections released by the province earlier this month. Those projections called for 1,600 deaths and 80,000 cases by April 30.

The projections also suggested that there would be at least 1,200 people in intensive care units by today’s date, possibly overwhelming Ontario’s healthcare system.

The province will release updated modeling today, which Ford has said residents will find “encouraging.”

Other highlights from the data: