TORONTO – For the fourth consecutive day, Ontario recorded more than 600 new cases of Covid-19 today: to be precise, 639 (zero deaths). It is true that the number is lower than on Sunday (722 cases), but it still marks a significant increase compared to the 526 infections reported last Monday. And it is also true that the tests carried out were less: 20,000, compared to 23,075 on Sunday. The seven-day average is now 580, up nearly 24% over the week and a whopping 104% over two weeks ago. But transmission growth has slowed: in early August, cases doubled every eight days. However, according to Ontario’s scientific table, every 100 people who contract the virus will transmit it on average to 119 other people, and cases will double every 22 days. 

In an interview with the Ctv News channel today morning, the director of the scientific table, Dr. Peter Juni, received that “we may need new restrictions” to limit the increase in cases and he added that “the task now is to make sure that all people will be vaccinated, particularly the older ones, because they will have a very high risk of ending up in intensive care, perhaps one in every 100, in the next 6-12 months”.

At the moment, there are 148 patients in intensive care throughout the province of Ontario (thirteen of whom were hospitalized today). Last week, there were 119 ICU patients.% Of the latest cases (515) occurred in individuals who were not vaccinated, partially vaccinated or for whom their vaccination status is not known (partially vaccinated and unvaccinated people represent about 34% of the population of Ontario), while the remaining 125 cases occurred in fully vaccinated individuals.

About the territorial distribution of the new cases reported today, 124 were registered in Toronto, 97 in the Peel region, 91 in the York region (the highest number of new cases reported in a single 24-hour period since May 26) and 64 in Hamilton. Elsewhere in the GTA, Durham reported 30 new cases and Halton reported 18.

The number of active cases across the province now stands at 5,126, the highest number since the third wave of the pandemic ended in spring.

Moving on to Quebec, 376 new cases were reported today, as well as an increase of 12 hospitalizations and one new death since the last update on Friday. Of the new cases reported on Monday, 320 (86 percent) of these came from people “inadequately vaccinated”. Across Canada, there were 1,186 new cases today: the data was detected at 2.30pm. And again at 2.30pm today, the total number of cases in Canada recorded since the start of the pandemic was 1,469,868 (Ontario 560,151; Quebec 385,120; Alberta 242,997; British Columbia 158,919; Manitoba 58,283; Saskatchewan 52,472; Nova Scotia 5,956; New Brunswick 2,614; Newfoundland and Labrador 1,460; Yukon 674; Nunavut 657; Northwest Territories 328; Prince Edward Island 224; the remaining cases refer to Canadians repatriated from other countries).

Photo by Steven Cornfield on Unsplash