The province of Ontario reported 563 new COVID-19 cases and five new deaths, with all leading signs of transmission now going in the wrong direction, on Friday.
The seven-day rolling average of new cases is now 390, up from 383 the day before and 355 a week ago.
The province reported 438 new cases, up from 378 on Wednesday. It’s the highest daily case total since October 9 in Ontario, on Thursday.
According to the COVID-19 Science Advisory Table, Ontario’s effective reproduction rate has risen above one again, reaching 1.09 on Monday, implying that every 100 new cases will result in 109 secondary infections.
One week ago they calculated the reproductive rate to be 0.99.
The Ministry of Health says 259 of Friday’s cases involved unvaccinated people, 15 involved people with one shot, 249 involved fully-vaccinated individuals and 40 involved people with unknown vaccination status.
The proportion of daily cases in unvaccinated people has been falling steadily for weeks now, accounting today for 46 per cent of the case count. As recently as the summer, close to 80 per cent of all daily cases would involve the unvaccinated.
About 23 per cent of Ontario residents are unvaccinated by choice or ineligible due to age.
UHN infectious diseases specialist Dr. Isaac Bogoch says the turnaround in trends is real and sustained, and the province must be prepared to take steps to stop it.
“(Numbers) are trending in the wrong direction, it’s not out of control now by any means yet but we still have to acknowledge that instead of having this low, low, low case rates, they are starting to go up,” he told CP24.
“If we compare it to last week, it’s going up. It’s only November, there’s a lot of fall and winter left in front of us, there’s opportunities for this virus to be transmitted especially in indoor settings.”
He said it is likely the province will see “peaks and valleys” in cases through the winter period.
“The key here is the size of the peak of course is completely on us. We know how to keep this virus at bay as a community. We have the tools to do this with vaccinations, with masks, with ventilation, with crowd control, with rapid tests.”
The province of Ontario lifted its last sector-specific occupancy restrictions on restaurants and fitness centres 11 days ago.
Provincial labs processed 30,187 test specimens, generating a positivity rate of at least 1.8 per cent once errors and duplicate tests are accounted for.
There are now 3,395 known active cases across Ontario, up from 3,189 yesterday and 3,038 one week ago.
There have been 32 deaths reported in the past week, and 9,896 deaths confirmed since March 2020.
York Region reported 52 new cases, Toronto 44 new cases, and Peel Region also reported 44 new cases across the GTA.
Four new cases were reported in Durham Region, 13 in Halton, and 12 in Hamilton.
According to the Ministry of Health, 129 persons are in hospital ICUs owing to COVID-19, with an undisclosed number of those patients coming from Saskatchewan.
A ventilator is being used to help 81 individuals breathe.
Overall, 225 persons have been admitted to hospitals as a result of COVID-19.
Source_ cp24.com
