Health Minister Premier Ford reports 35 new COVID-19 deaths in Ontario

Another 1,723 cases of COVID-19 and 35 deaths in Ontario were associated with illness.

Five public health departments have registered 100 or more new cases:

• Peel area: 500
• Toronto: 410
• York area: 196
• Durham Area: 124
• Waterloo Area: 103

Other areas that have seen double-digit growth:

• Hamilton: 74
• Windsor-Essex: 60
• Ottawa: 46
• Halton Area: 45
• Simco Muscoca: 45
• Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph: 20
• Niagara Field: 18
• Chatham-Kent: 15
• Southwest: 12
• Thunder Bay: 10

(Note: All statistics used for new cases in this story can be found on or off the COVID-19 dashboard of the Ontario Ministry of Health Daily epidemiological summary. The number of cases related to any area may be different from those reported by the local public health unit because local units report statistics at different times.)

Today’s new cases involve 166 schools: 140 students and 26 staff. Some 742, or about 15.4 percent, of the 4,828 government funds in Ontario currently have at least one case of COVID-19, but six schools have been closed due to illness.

New infections raised the seven-day average to a record 1,720.

There are currently 14,526 confirmed, active cases across the province of COVID-19, which is also new.

Ontario’s Labs Network processed 44,226 test samples for the novel Coronavirus and reported a provisionwide passivity rate of 4.7 percent. Another 49,574 tests were added to the queue.

The number of patients in Ontario hospitals with COVID-19 cases has risen to 656, with the province reporting 183 people being treated in intensive care. 106 of them were on ventilators.

35 The official death toll rose to 3,698. Twenty-two of the 35 deaths in today’s update were long-term care residents.