For the first time since the start of the pandemic, the province has eclipsed the 4,000 mark in daily new COVID cases. An additional 26 deaths were reported on Friday, including 15 in long-term care.
The province recorded 4,249 news cases on Friday, surpassing Thursday’s previous high of 3,519 new cases by more than 700 cases. The number of cases in Toronto has also surged by several hundred from 941 cases to 1,382 cases.
But according to Public Health Ontario, some of the new cases reported provincially and within Toronto are from a data backlog from the past few days.
The province completed a new testing high of 71,481 tests in the past 24 hours.
But as the number of active cases jumped significantly, the number of hospitalizations dipped slightly over Thursday to 1,446. Patients in intensive care have reached 369, with 250 patients on ventilators.
There have been 208,394 COVID-19 cases in Ontario to date. A total of 4,882 people have died.
New COVID-19 cases in Ontario on January 8
The following regions reported five or more new cases of COVID-19:
Toronto = 1382
Peel = 691
York Region = 427
Niagara Region = 213
Windsor-Essex County = 184
City of Hamilton = 176
Durham Region = 170
Ottawa = 154
Region of Waterloo = 147
Halton Region = 134
Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph = 85
Simcoe Muskoka District = 75
Lambton = 56
Middlesex-London = 53
Eastern Ontario = 45
Brant County = 41
Southwestern = 40
Huron Perth = 31
Haldimand-Norfolk = 20
Grey Bruce = 20
Sudbury & Districts = 13
Haliburton, Kawartha, Pine Ridge
District = 13
Kingston, Frontenac and Lennox
& Addington = 12
Renfrew County and District = 12
Chatham-Kent = 10
Peterborough = 8
Thunder Bay District = 8
Leeds, Grenville & Lanark District = 7
Northwestern = 7
Porcupine = 6
