Ontario reports less than 900 cases amid Toronto data issue

Ontario reported 847 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, but a delay in Toronto's data has been impacting the province's daily reported cases.

Wednesday's cases include 257 new COVID-19 cases in Toronto, 170 in Peel and 131 in York Region. The province has confirmed 338 cases of the B.1.1.7 variant, initially detected in the U.K., six B.1.351 variant cases, first identified in South Africa, and one P1 case, a variant initially detected in Brazil.

The provincial government is warning that Toronto Public Health’s migration to the new provincial data system is impacting the total reported cases.

Ontario confirmed 10 more COVID-19 deaths, bringing the total to 6,729.

The province completed 33,977 tests in the past 24 hours, up from the 27,005 tests completed a day earlier. The percentage of positive test totalled three per cent on Wednesday.

There are currently 719 people in Ontario hospitals with COVID-19, including 298 in ICUs.

A total of 155 long-term care homes in the province currently have a reported outbreak, involving 210 active resident cases and 333 active staff cases.

On Tuesday, Dr. Barbara Yaffe, Ontario's associate chief medical officer of health, urged people in the province to stick to the public health measures in place, even as more regions move out of the stay-at-home order, due to increased concerns around the transmissibility of COVID-19 variants.

"This is not the time to get complacent," Dr. Yaffe said. "I am strongly urging everybody to please continue to stay at home and limit non-essential trips, and continue to adhere to public health measures."

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