Public Health Ontario has reported 904 new cases of COVID-19 today and an additional 964 cases from the previous. (The agency did not report yesterday due to the provincial Family Day holiday).
Almost two-thirds of today's new cases are from the Greater Toronto Area, including 320 new cases in Toronto, 154 new cases in Peel and 118 new positives in York Region.
The province is reporting 26 more deaths related to the coronavirus over the past 48 hours.
The Feb. 16 update provided by the province's public health agency also reported the following data:
- 1,012 new recoveries
- 742 people are currently hospitalized with COVID-19 in Ontario. However, it's important to note, more than 10% of hospitals did not submit data to the Daily Bed Census. The number of hospitalized patients may increase when reporting compliance increase
- There are 292 COVID patients in intensive care units and 201 COVID patients on ventilators.
- The province reported 27,000 tests were completed Feb. 15 and nearly 30,400 on Feb. 14.
- Another 15,024 tests are still under investigation and/or being processed. To date, 10,433,272 tests have been completed in Ontario since the start of the pandemic.
Variant of concern
- The province has reported 309 lab-confirmed cases of the UK variant strain of COVID-19 (B.1.1.7).
- The province has reported nine cases of B.1.351 (also known as the South African variant).
- The province is also reporting one case of P.1 (also known as the Brazilian variant)
- According to Public Health Ontario, there are delays between specimen collection and the testing required to confirm a variant of concern. As such, the reports can change and can differ from past case counts publicly reported.
Vaccine update for Feb. 16:
- As of 8 p.m. on Feb. 15, the province reported 480,377 doses of vaccine against COVID-19 have been administered.
- More than 175,000 people have been fully vaccinated, having received two doses of vaccine, which are to be given a few weeks apart.
Public Health Ontario has confirmed 287,736 cases of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, and reported 269,413 recoveries and 6,719 deaths, of which 3,803 were individuals living in long-term care homes.
On Friday, the Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit reported 32 new cases of COVID-19 in the region.
Since the start of the pandemic, the local health unit has confirmed 5,872 cases of COVID-19 with 5,043 of those cases recovered and 173 cases ending in death. There are 617 active, lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the region, with the majority of those in Simcoe County.
According to the health unit, 150 local cases have tested positive for the B.1.1.7 variant that originated in the UK and an additional 86 cases have screened positive (awaiting confirmatory testing).
For the latest breakdown of cases in the Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit, click here.
