Ontario confirmed 1,873 new COVID-19 cases and 17 more deaths on December 12 and broke another testing record.
Medical labs in the province completed 65,260 tests in the past 24 hours, up from the previous record of 63,051 on Friday. The per cent positivity rate is 3.2 per cent, according to Public Health Ontario.
The Greater Toronto Area continues to lead in daily case counts.
“Locally, there are 522 new cases in Toronto, 436 in Peel, 185 in York Region and 109 in Hamilton. There are 1,918 more resolved cases,” Health Minister Christine Elliott said on Twitter.
On Friday, the province announced York Region and Windsor-Essex will move into the lockdown level of the COVID-19 response framework on December 14, and Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph will move into the red zone.
Toronto and Peel Region have been in lockdown since November 23. Public health officials said during a COVID-19 data projection presentation this week that the lockdown measures have slowed case growth, but the epidemic curve is not flattening.
“We’re in a really precarious stage here,” Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. David Williams said. “And we have to really watch this carefully if we are not going to have to close some things further.”
On Tuesday, December 15, the province will pilot the first phase of the COVID-19 vaccination plan, with health-care workers in Toronto and Ottawa expected to receive the first shots of the two-shot Pfizer vaccine.
Retired Gen. Rick Hillier, chair of the COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution Task Force, said 1,500 people in each city will receive shots by appointment. The second doses will be saved for 21 days to ensure those people are able to receive the shots.
Pfizer has confirmed Ontario will receive more vaccines in 21 days but the province is proceeding with caution in case there are delays. The vaccine must be kept at -70 C.
Ontario expects to receive 90,000 doses by the end of December, which will be distributed to 14 hospitals in the red and lockdown zones.
Ontario reported 1,848 new cases on Friday, a record 1,983 new cases on Thursday, 1,890 on Wednesday and 1,676 on Tuesday.
Hospitalizations have risen from 808 a day earlier to 855 patients, including 237 in intensive care and 143 on ventilators.
There are now 16,221 active cases in the province.
To date, there have been 138,504 cases of COVID-19 in Ontario. Of those, 118,350 are resolved and 3,933 people have died.
New COVID-19 cases in Ontario on December 12
The following regions reported five or more COVID-19 cases:
Toronto = 522
Peel Region = 436
York Region = 185
Hamilton = 109
Windsor-Essex = 81
Durham Region = 80
Region of Waterloo = 78
Halton Region = 47
Niagara Region = 45
Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph = 38
Middlesex-London = 37
Simcoe Muskoka = 31
Kingston, Frontenac and Lennox & Addington = 24
Southwestern = 21
Ottawa = 19
Brant County = 17
Hastings Prince Edward = 15
Thunder Bay = 13
Haliburton, Kawartha, Pine Ridge = 12
Eastern Ontario = 11
Leeds, Grenville & Lanark = 10
Renfrew County = 10
Haldimand-Norfolk = 9
Huron Perth = 7
